Lord of the Sabbath

Second, it's kind of curious, Every other measure of our days and time are set aside by something else in creation. So months are set aside by the lunar pattern. The year, solar. But the week, that's God's creation order. It's because that's what God said our week should be.

Third, the Sabbath is a significant marker for God's holy nation, Israel.

On Mount Sinai, it was set aside as the day to mark off. If there's a sign of the Sinai Covenant, if there's a sign of the Mosaic Covenant, it is the Sabbath. It was read earlier from Exodus 31. Now, interesting that the Ten Commandments give us the importance of the Sabbath, but in Exodus 20, it refers back to the foundation or grounding of the Sabbath as the redemption of Israel, being freed from slavery in Egypt.

But in Deuteronomy 5, the grounding is in creation itself. The Israel is supposed to rest on the Sabbath because God rested on the last day. Those two things are related and are connected. Entering into God's eternal rest is explicitly and necessarily tied to the redemption of God from sin and slavery. Both of those are true. Both of those are important for us to understand a full theology of the Sabbath. The Sabbath was meant to be an identity-forming weekly routine, where Israel would set aside work.

They were not to work. It was a very specific prohibition. Now, we're gonna be introduced in our text to some guys called the Pharisees. The Pharisees had 39 prohibitions to help God's people know what it meant not to work. Now, we usually think of Pharisees as kind of judgmental, and that's usually how they're presented in scripture, but I kinda wanna help us understand, most of us would be of the same conservative camp that wants to know exactly what God's word says. and want to know how to apply it. And the Pharisees, at least the original 39 prohibitions, I believe they were meant to help God's people know what it meant not to work.

The main problem is when we take our tradition, our application, and make it more important than God's word. So today's text, we have one of the many instances, Jesus, work, Sabbath. Whenever you see that mixture, it's a royal rumble. Just get ready, that means a fight's about to happen. Jesus, Pharisees, Sabbath especially, it's going down. So this morning, we're going to see this fight escalate significantly. I really wanna make sure we see in the text that there's two very important things Jesus tells us about himself. It's in verses six and verse eight.

Something greater than the temple is here.

And the Son of Man, that is Jesus, is Lord of the Sabbath. The Pharisees do not get what the Sabbath is because they do not see who Jesus is. In order to truly celebrate the Sabbath of God, you must first know Yahweh. Three points if you're taking notes.

Jesus shows us how to use the law lawfully. There are many ways to use the law unlawfully. Jesus is going to teach us how to use the law lawfully. Jesus is going to show us how the law points to him. Many of our songs have already pointed this major theme throughout scripture, that all things were filled in Christ. The second thing we'll see tonight, this morning, is Jesus shows us how the law points to him. And then finally, Jesus shows us the purpose of the law is our good.

Use the law lawfully

First, Jesus teaches us how to use the law lawfully. Again, verse one is pretty pedestrian, except for one particular instance.

At the time, Jesus went through the grain fields on the Sabbath, his disciples were hungry, and they began to pluck heads of grain and to eat.

This is not abnormal. There is no McDonald's as they're traveling. They would go grab grains of the heads of the grain and they would do what could be considered work because you have to break the husk apart and then you'd eat the grain. This is the way they would satisfy a hunger.

The fact that it's happening on the Sabbath gives you the instance that this is going to be something beyond a simple story. It's that day, again, that you're not supposed to work, and then you have to decide, well, what is work? What will be essential for this human life, and then what would be work unnecessary for God?

The Pharisees, they saw the Sabbath as something they needed to protect in order to protect God's holiness. They flipped the problem around. Jesus is very clear, the Sabbath is made for man, not the other way around. The Pharisees want to make sure they protect God's holiness, where God is holy, period.

They wanted to create a fear, and they're afraid of encroaching upon God with a breaking of the covenant. No, the whole idea is that the covenant, Sabbath, is for our good. To teach us, we need rest. To teach us, we're not infinite in strength and power. So the Pharisees, they then tell Jesus, do you not see this? When the Pharisees, they saw it, they looked at Jesus, what are your disciples doing, verse two?

They're doing what is not lawful to do on the Sabbath.

Now, all right, they're approaching Jesus. They're saying, your disciples aren't doing what's lawful according to their 39 prohibitions. I want you to see how Jesus responds. In verse three and five, he repeats a phrase, have you not read? The Pharisees are supposed to be the authorities on God's word.

I'm not sure this is the nicest way to approach this problem for Jesus. I think he's being a little punchy here. Have you not read? The authorities on what's supposed to be read, he's questioning them. Now, when it comes to the crowds, he says, have you not heard? Because they would hear. That's how they would primarily learn. But here, the authorities on what are supposed to be read, they are the authorities of the written law Have you not read? And there's two main testimonies that Jesus presents before them to show what is lawful and what's not lawful.

First,

have you not read what David did when he was hungry and those were with him?

How he entered the house of God and ate the bread of the presence, which it was not lawful for him to eat, nor for those who were with him, but only for the priest.

So this is an instance where David has been out fighting, his men are hungry. The temple, there are certain parts of the temple that only the priest could go in. And there were certain elements in the temple that only the priest could handle. Well, this bread, the bread of presence is 12 loaves that are presented to God in a covenant promise, and they're only to be eaten by the priest.

Well, at this instant, when David and his men are hungry, They are permitted to go in and eat this bread, and they're not condemned for it. That's a significant point of what Jesus is pointing out. God's own word does not condemn David for eating what was not supposed to be his, because it was just for the priest in the temple, because of the human need of hunger. And this would relate to Jesus' disciples being hungry and eating the grain on that same day. Well, then he gives another testimony from God's word.

Or have you not read in the law how on the Sabbath, the priests in the temple profane the Sabbath and are guiltless?

Here, I believe he's referring to the fact that the priests, they actually do work on the Sabbath. They have to do work to do the aspects of the temple worship and the different aspects of what is required of them would equate to what the Pharisees would call work. They've been separated out, but they're not guilty because they're doing the very work of God.

Now, Jesus is telling them that you're not reading the law right. You're not reading God's law according to its own principles. You're not reading it in a way that's consistent They've made the law a burden. Significant, as we remember last week, Jesus says,

come to me, all who are weary, my burden is easy, my yoke is light.

God's law has lots of prohibitions and restrictions. They're not meant to be a burden.

God never says no to something that's good for you. When God says don't do it, that means it's not good for you. When God says to do it, it means it's something good for you. The law is an expression of God who designed you and created you and whose will and desire is to bless you with all that is good. Everything about God's law is good.

He teaches us to avoid that which is not helpful for us. His law is designed to show us boundaries for our good and to show us how to prioritize and to fear him in wisdom so that we enjoy what is good. Again, Jesus' yoke is light. It doesn't mean it's lawless. It means the law is written in our hearts. We learn to see what the law is meant to do.

The Pharisees, they would use the law to condemn people. to people down, to give them extra weight that no one could do, not even they would do it. They made the law a burden. But if you go to Psalm 1, blessed is the man who delights in the law of God, who sees its truth, its righteousness, and its blessing. They're accusing the disciples of being guilty when they're guiltless because they're not breaking the actual law of God.

These two exceptions show that they haven't truly understood the intention of the law. That intention we'll see there in verse seven a little bit later,

I desire mercy and not sacrifice.

Now, I do wanna give a caution here because there's a tendency among many to think, how can I loosen the law and see how far away from the center I can get until I break it? A lot of the questions about the ordinances have been almost this. How far away can we get from the clear command and pattern of scripture until it's not true anymore? The goal isn't to see how loose we can make the law. The goal of life is to see how bound we can be up near God.

Something greater than the temple

Jesus says,

if you love me, you keep my commandments and my joy will be complete in you.

There is no dichotomy between law and love. There's a great unity. of knowing God's love, knowing he gave us his law in love, knowing that if we love him, we'll keep his commandments. The goal isn't to figure out how much I can loose and find little caveats like David ate bread, maybe I can break these commandments. The goal is to see how God blesses us with goodness in all that he says. Our second thing we wanna see is these great, bold statements in 6 and 8. Jesus shows us how the law points to him. Verse six,

I tell you, something greater than the temple is here.

If you're gonna memorize two things from the text, it's those two declarations that Jesus says, this is the first one, something greater than the temple is here. The Sabbath is one incredible day that was so important for the culture, for the identity, for the covenant of Israel, but the temple is a whole nother aspect of their worship, the huge glorious building.

Everything revolved around the temple, where the sacrifices were made, where they would come once a year at least and worship God, even from a distance within the temple. See, the temple was designed by God as a place where man could approach God. It started as a tabernacle, that is a movable temple. After the Exodus, God gave instruction on what the tabernacle would look like, and that is where the land would be slaughtered, the priest would go in once a year, make the sacrifice, and it represents God's presence with man. Distant presence, fearful presence, but presence. The temple is where God and man get to meet again.

Jesus is referring to this temple and he's saying something's greater than this structure that God gave instructions for where man gets to come into the presence of God. It represents God's move towards sinners to save us from destruction. It represents the distance sin has caused between us and God. The temple's where that sin offering is made. Well, Jesus is referring to himself here as something greater than the temple.

You see, Jesus is God who's actually taken man and humanity upon himself. He has added to himself in a way that instead of just God meeting humanity, he became humanity. He added to himself. Jesus is described in John's Gospel as God tabernacling with us. The temple itself with us. God has permanently united himself with man. This is what we celebrate at Christmas. God becoming his own temple.

Now Jesus is God's perfect presence with man. He's the perfect priest who makes the once for all sacrifice. He is the once for all sacrifice that takes away the sins of the world. He offered that sacrifice as a sinless life for sinners so that God's wrath is fully satisfied. He's greater than the temple because he's the one who provides perfect and true forever reconciliation. If you want more truth on what that is, the book of Hebrews walks through how he is the priest the sacrifice in the true temple that brings proper final reconciliation.

Actually back far out, the garden was a temple. The garden is where God and man would meet face to face before sin. When we sinned, distance was created. When we sinned, there is now no longer, the temple is a protection for us against the holiness of God.

But now that Jesus has come to provide that perfect reconciliation with his own blood, we can know him again. We can know and be forgiven perfectly. He's greater than the temple. Jesus touches lepers and he does not become sick. He cleanses them. When Jesus touches the dead, he's not defiled, he raises them to new life. Everything about Jesus coming as the temple to bring again a right relationship with God and man shows his great power as God to unite us.

The second thing we see here is this verse that he quotes from Hosea. And this is kind of the hermeneutical cue or clue as to how he is interpreting the law lawfully.

If you had known what this means, I desire mercy and not sacrifice, you would not have condemned the guiltless.

Remember Hosea, he also quoted from Hosea 9.13, second time he's quoted the same passage. He's not denying sacrifices. God did command sacrifices, but he's showing a priority here. The context of Hosea is important. Hosea is the book where God makes it clear, I am the covenant faithful husband.

Israel, you keep playing the whore. You keep prostituting yourself out to other gods. That's what false worship is like in God's eyes. He has come to make a covenant and he is faithful to his covenant. He's faithful to every promise, but his people keep going after other gods and loving other gods and worshiping other gods.

And then they would just want to say, well, I'll just cover it up with a sacrifice. No, that isn't how it works, God says. You don't just cover up all your sin with a simple sacrifice. It's a matter of turning your heart towards me. You must love me because I have first loved you.

If we think we'll just keep sinning and keep sacrificing, keep sinning, keep sacrificing, that isn't really restoring the covenant. That isn't really repenting. It's trying to simply cover over our sin our own way, knowing we're going to go back to it. It's principle. require these obediences for the obedience sake, he desires the steadfast love of his people.

There's a real question for us, though. Can you trust Jesus, the greater temple? I'm gonna assume, I hope we all realize we are sinners. We can go to the Ten Commandments. We've lied, cheated, looked lustfully at others, been angry. We've all sinned. We all are guilty before God.

Lord of the Sabbath

Jesus is the only one who has come down from heaven as God to die perfectly for our sin so that it can be forgiven, and now he's calling us into this mercy. He's calling us into His mercy, His steadfast love. Question for you, can you trust Him? And do you trust Him? Now the second claim is specifically focused here on the Sabbath. The Son of Man is Lord of the Sabbath. That's the other passage you wanna just memorize here. The Son of Man is Lord of the Sabbath. The Son of Man is taken from Deuteronomy 7.

If you want to go and look at what that passage means, it is a divine title. There's a few things Jesus is saying here that are significant. He is claiming to have authority to declare what the Sabbath is and what is right and wrong on the Sabbath. Remember, he's already taught Matthew 5 to 7, the great law declaration. And after the end of it, all the crowds were amazed at the authority that he had. Here, he himself is claiming an authority as to what is right and wrong on the Sabbath. He's coming to be God in two different ways.

Son of man is a divine title. Lord of the Sabbath is something that only God could do. He's claiming to have authority over God's own Sabbath. He's also claiming the rest that we need. because that's the Lord of the Sabbath, He is our Sabbath. Sabbath and rest go hand in hand, and this passage, again, is coming right after Jesus has told us, He is our rest. The Sabbath day points man to the rest we need in God.

Creation designs this. From the very beginning, there's a pattern. Every day of the week, God worked to bring about a creation. He spoke and things came into existence. On that last day, he rested. There is no end to that day. That's what makes that seventh day kind of interesting in that pattern.

And I believe that's pointing us to see that the ultimate end of man is to rest in God, to be in a right relationship with God, to know him and be known by him. This is why Jesus, when he says in the previous chapter,

come to me, and I will give you rest.

Come to me, I am your Sabbath rest. Those are the same concept, same word. One refers to a day, one refers to Jesus himself. He is our rest. The other way scripture speaks of this is to abide in him, to trust him, to walk in his ways, to follow him.

And then he reproduces joy. Jesus is the Lord of the Sabbath. He is your Sabbath. His order and rule are good if you rest in him. That is the grand invitation of scripture. Not that you can set aside a day to not work, but that you can actually know God who has provided the perfect salvation for you. Know God who designed you and gives you his law on your heart, and he actually gives you the rest you're longing for.

Remember Christ

Now, this is where many would ask, are we Sabbatarians? And what that means is the Old Testament laws, are they referred back from the Saturday to the Sunday? I am not a Sabbatarian in that way, but I wanna make some comments on what this could mean and give us some application. The Old Covenant Sabbath focused on what you did not do. The Old Covenant Sabbath was focused on not working.

It was a prohibition-focused Holy Day. The New Covenant Holy Day, which is today, the first day, the focus is on what is expected of you. Encourage one another. Stir up one another in love. Be present with the saints and set aside this day to worship with God's people. It's focused on what you do.

My concern for Sabbatarians is only if you use the Sabbath like the Pharisees would and condemn others for doing things that you don't think they should be doing. My real concern are for those who are not Sabbatarians and believe there's nothing sacred about this day at all. Sunday is not fun day. Sunday is not another day of relaxing and rejoicing in the things of this world to fill in all the sports you couldn't fit in on Saturday, or to relax because you didn't do it yesterday. Today is the day that we come together to remember Jesus is risen. We come together to remember Christ.

He rose on the first day of the week to bring in a new creation, to renew you in his image, to bring about a new life. The whole fact that a people of God, the Israelites, who believed in Jesus, they changed their holy day. That's one of the greatest evidences that Christ is risen. That they changed the day they set aside to be the most important holy day from Saturday, the last day of the week, to Sunday, the first day of the week. Today's a new day to rest in him. to rejoice in Him, to remember the covenant that we have been given in Christ. Your Creator has come to be raised from the dead to make you a new creation.

Your King you can trust because He rules with all authority at the right hand of the Father. Remember, He's gentle and lowly in His rule. You can rest in Him. You can trust Him. He has all authority. He is risen from the dead. You can trust him because he uses all of his authority for your good.

Sabbath is for your good

Our last point, Jesus teaches us that Sabbath is for your good. Notice it's a new setting and a new scene, but it's the same theme. It could even be a whole other week The Gospels, Matthew, he could take another event and tie it here just for a theological purpose of this narrative. It could be the same day. But it's a whole new scene.

Now he went on from there and he entered the synagogue.

That is kind of the local, be somewhat like a church, the center of a town for the religious purposes of remembering and trusting God's word.

And a man was there with a withered hand.

They asked him, now it's important, they is the Pharisees. There's not a new group introduced, and we see at the very end, verse 14, it's the Pharisees who went out and conspired. So they, the Pharisees, they asked him,

is it lawful to heal on the Sabbath?

And Matthew, a good storyteller, he tells us their intention.

They want to accuse him, they're trying to capture him, they're trying to catch him. And eventually they're gonna realize they can't do this, but they're still haughty. It isn't lawful to heal on the Sabbath, they say, knowing that there's a man with a withered hand, and he typically is healing everybody that he sees in trouble. He said to them,

which one of you has a sheep, if it falls into a pit on the Sabbath, will not take hold of it and lift it out?

All right, whenever Jesus answers a question with a question, it's kind of teaching you that you're asking the wrong question. He's trying to help them out. He's not trying to help them so you don't really get how good the law is and how good God is. You're asking the wrong question.

Now, the Pharisees, there are 39 prohibitions they did have a qualification that if there was an immediate danger or an emergency, you could do work. So that is kind of the setting here. There's a man with a withered hand, and Jesus is asking about a sheep in a pit. Now, I assume they're thinking, well, if you're visiting the ER, right, in the triage, the withered hand, that's not one of the most life-threatening. So this doesn't equate yet the high level of danger that the Pharisees would put on if you can do healing, Jesus challenges him with, if you have a sheep, won't you help that sheep on the Sabbath? In verse 12, he gives an answer, and he's regularly doing this throughout the Gospel of Matthew.

It's a more greater kind of argument. How much more value is a man than a sheep?

How much more value is a man than a sheep so it is lawful to do good on the Sabbath?

If you would help your sheep on the Sabbath, why wouldn't I help this man on the Sabbath? Man has a greater value.

Now, I'm gonna pause right there. The premier ethicist of our culture, Peter Singer, would call this speciesism. He would say it's wrong to judge different life as greater than the other. I mention that because that's kind of the waters we do swim in. You be aware of that? And how opposed that is to God's word of goodness and order?

Jesus teaches over and over again, man is greater than the birds of the air and of the sheep. All right, I get there's folks who really love their dogs and their cats, and I'm a well-known not dog or cat lover. I don't think you should kick the dog or the cat, but they're not people.

The key here, human life, human life has been given a great dignity. That's his point that we must hold on to in order to truly understand who our neighbor is. Human life has been given a unique dignity that's greater than all the other earthly life. That is a basis of his argument that we have to understand before we can even appreciate his argument. Human life is made valuable by God. And it's so valuable, made in God's image, God himself came down to save us from our sin.

Here he's simply saying, you help your sheep. I've come down as the great shepherd and these are my sheep. They're the human beings I've come down and I will heal him. Notice verse 13. Everybody just do this real quick. The man with the withered hand, if his hand has been withered his whole life, he doesn't have muscles, doesn't have blood vessels working, his nerves don't work, everything's atrophied. And in an instant, Jesus says,

stretch out your hand

, and it stretches out just like the other.

Who could do that? The creator can. The one who spoke life into existence. just immediately, miraculously, not with any kind of surgery. There's no rehab needed. It's just better. It's fixed. It's made whole again. It's restored and healthy like the other.

The Lord of the Sabbath has taught us something very important about the law. It's for our good. What God does with the law is for a good. What we are to do in the law is good. He's making it clear it's lawful to heal on the Sabbath. The Sabbath is God's good day of rest. It isn't meant to be guarded so that we're terrified of doing something that would be good. It's good to remember God's covenant on the day of rest. It's good to have a day of rest from the busyness of life. I believe if you're going to celebrate that, it was yesterday, the last day of the week, the Sabbath. If you're looking for a day of rest, it's the Sabbath.

If you're not a believer, I don't want you to worry about these days. I want you to worry about your sin and the one day you will see God face to face. because there's nothing to say on that day other than you know you're guilty. And there's only one person who can speak up for you is this Jesus Christ, the Lord of the Sabbath, who came to die on the cross and rose again, so if you believe in him, you can be saved. He will speak for you on that day. Today, if you hear his voice, trust him. Turn to him. and ask him to show you who he is. Believe in him to be saved.

The first day of the week

If you're a Christian, I want you to think about days. I want to challenge you that you should think of today, Sunday, as the first day of the week. I'm wondering how many already think that? I think we were kind of trained and in the waters to think Monday's the first day because it's the first day of work. Now this is the first day of the week according to creation, according to God's design.

We don't come to church on the last day of our week to give him whatever's left over. No, we're coming on the first day of the week so that we're ready for the rest of the week to trust him, to follow him, and to be faithful. We come and we set aside this day of the week first because it is the day Jesus rose. We come to stir each other up into the remembering the great covenant God has given us in His resurrection. We come to remind each other of the new life and the new victory and the new faithfulness we can have by following Christ. It's setting us up so that we will then live out the rest of the week according to God's purposes.

It's important how you think about how you start your week. Are you starting your week seeking to know God so that the rest of the week making Him known. The whole idea is that we're not coming and giving God what's left over. We're seeking to make God the priority by giving Him the first fruits of our time, to come and remember His resurrection, to reorient your life to love Him with all your heart, your strength, your soul, with all your time.

He is the Lord of the Sabbath. He is the Lord of rest that gives you rest. We need to stop being people too busy to rest in Jesus. Will you pray with me? Father, we thank you that you do not leave us distant, lost, confused. Father, we thank you that you sent your Son, your own word and wisdom to be with us, to restore us, to give us the rest we long for but cannot find. Lord, help us to trust you. Help us to know how to walk in your ways, walking by faith.

Lord, I pray we would know how to stir each other up. to remember all that has been given to us in the resurrected Christ, to make him known this week, to come together to know you so that we long to see you face to face. In Jesus' name we pray, amen.