Teaching of Jesus from the Gospel of Luke (Part 5 The Sabbath)
Teachings of Jesus from the Gospel of Luke (Part 5 The Sabbath)
Reading: Exodus 20:1-17 “
The Ten Commandments
20 And God spoke all these words: 2 “I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery.
3 “You shall have no other gods before me.
4 “You shall not make for yourself an image in the form of anything in heaven above or on the earth beneath or in the waters below. 5 You shall not bow down to them or worship them; for I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God, punishing the children for the sin of the parents to the third and fourth generation of those who hate me, 6 but showing love to a thousand generations of those who love me and keep my commandments.
7 “You shall not misuse the name of the Lord your God, for the Lord will not hold anyone guiltless who misuses his name.
8 “Remember the Sabbath day by keeping it holy. 9 Six days you shall labor and do all your work, 10 but the seventh day is a sabbath to the Lord your God. On it you shall not do any work, neither you, nor your son or daughter, nor your male or female servant, nor your animals, nor any foreigner residing in your towns. 11 For in six days the Lord made the heavens and the earth, the sea, and all that is in them, but he rested on the seventh day. Therefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy.
12 “Honor your father and your mother, so that you may live long in the land the Lord your God is giving you.
13 “You shall not murder.
14 “You shall not commit adultery.
15 “You shall not steal.
16 “You shall not give false testimony against your neighbor.
17 “You shall not covet your neighbor’s house. You shall not covet your neighbor’s wife, or his male or female servant, his ox or donkey, or anything that belongs to your neighbor.”
Imagine if you would being one of the Israelites that the Lord had just set free from Egypt. You lived your whole life as a slave in Egypt, maybe making or carrying bricks, or maybe serving some Egyptian doing all his dirty work from dust to dawn seven days a week. And then finally you are free. God heard your prayers and sent Moses who confronts the Pharaoh time and time again. God strikes Egypt with plague after plague and finally you are free and on the on the other side of the Red Sea. And you are being led to the mountain of God, and then God gives you these Ten Commandments to live by.
The first three commands were very reasonable and were concerned with how you were to threat the One that just freed you. The commands specified that you were not to put any other God before Him, and not to make any stature of images of Him to worship. Nor were you to use Him or His name improperly or disrespectfully or in vain.
Why are they reasonable commands? Because He was the awesome and powerful God that just saved you; the creator of all heaven and earth.
The other commands were reasonable also and more for your benefit. Don’t steal from one another. Don’t murder one another. Don’t even lie about another or covet another’s possession. And by no means do anything to dishonor your mom or dad. Who wouldn’t want to live with rules like that; especially if everyone agreed to keep those laws.
God also mentions another command saying “Remember the Sabbath day by keeping it holy. 9 Six days you shall labor and do all your work, 10 but the seventh day is a Sabbath to the Lord your God. On it you shall not do any work, neither you, nor your son or daughter, nor your male or female servant, nor your animals, nor any foreigner residing in your towns. 11 For in six days the Lord made the heavens and the earth, the sea, and all that is in them, but he rested on the seventh day. Therefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy.”
I think if it was me hearing that command after being enslave and having my tail worked off most of my life probably seven days a week, I would have done a little ‘happy dance’ right then and there. ‘Oh for joy, a day off.’
The idea of something being holy is simply this, when God set something apart for a special reason it’s holy. It’s not holy in and of itself, rather something is holy because God set it apart for a special purpose. And regarding the Sabbath it was to give man and beast a day off from their labor.
As they did with many things the leading Jewish religious leaders had built figurative hedges around many of God’s laws by the time Jesus came along.
And what do I mean by hedges? They made up new rules and regulations to help prevent people from braking God’s original law. It would be like our state government setting the speed limit at 55 mph on the road in front of our church building. But just to make sure that no one would break that law the county comes in and makes up a new ruling saying that the speed is going to be 45 mph. And then the town sets the speed limit at 40 mph for cars and only 30 mph for trucks. Well the Jews kind a did the same thing with God’s Laws including the Sabbath.
They made a whole bunch of rules up so that their fellow Jews would not break God’s law concerning the Sabbath. The problem is that they made those rules a law unto themselves which became more of a burden than help.
For example here are some of the rules they made up concerning what the people could not do on the Sabbath:
- Jew’s were permitted to administer first aid to an injured person to save them from dying but they were not do anything to relieve a persons pain.
- The could tie and knot in a rope, but only if it could be done with one hand.
- The Jews were limited to traveling a distance of only 2000 cubits or a 1000 yards (which they thought was an adequate distance to get to the local synagogue.
– Here is a list of some other things that they could not do. There was not to be any Sowing, Plowing, Reaping, Binding sheaves, Threshing, Winnowing, Selecting, Grinding, Sifting, Kneading, Baking, Shearing wool, Washing wool, Beating wool, Dyeing wool, Spinning, Weaving, Making two loops, Weaving two threads, Separating two threads, Untying, Sewing stitches, Tearing, Trapping, Slaughtering, Flaying, Tanning, Scraping hide, Marking hides, Cutting hide to shape, Writing two or more letters, Erasing two or more letters, Building, Demolishing, Extinguishing a fire, Kindling a fire, Putting the finishing touch on an object, Transporting an object between a private domain and the public domain, or for a distance of 4 cubits within the public domain.
In our text today in Luke Chapter 6 Jesus teaches something about the Sabbath. Read 6:1-5 “One Sabbath Jesus was going through the grainfields, and his disciples began to pick some heads of grain, rub them in their hands and eat the kernels. 2 Some of the Pharisees asked, “Why are you doing what is unlawful on the Sabbath?”
3 Jesus answered them, “Have you never read what David did when he and his companions were hungry? 4 He entered the house of God, and taking the consecrated bread, he ate what is lawful only for priests to eat. And he also gave some to his companions.” 5 Then Jesus said to them, “The Son of Man is Lord of the Sabbath.”
I believe that this incident involved some of those manmade regulations about what could and what could not be done on the Sabbath which these Pharisees saw as a priority over what the original command of God intended.
The law permitted people to glean from the fields as they passed through them (Deut. 23:25). However, the Pharisees chose to view the disciples’ gleaning as harvesting, and their rubbing the grain in their hands as threshing and winnowing, as well as preparing a meal. The Pharisees considered all these practices inappropriate for the Sabbath. (Constable)
So Jesus taught them a lesson from OT scripture. He referred to the story of what David did in 1 Sam. 21:1-9. The story took place when David and his men were very hungry and went to a priest and asked if he had any food for them to eat. The priest gave them the consecrated show bread that was left over from the day before. ). His point was twofold, first that their ceremonial traditions are secondary to the divine intent of God’s law.
What David did was contrary to the Pharisees’ understanding of what the
Mosaic Law required (Lev. 24:9), yet Scripture did not condemn him for
what he did (cf. 2 Chron. 30:18-20). What Jesus’ disciples did was not contrary to the divine intent of God’s 4th Commandment concerning the Sabbath, so He indicates that the Pharisees should not have condemned them for what they did.
Why didn’t the Scriptures condemn David for what he did? It was because David was meeting a human need. God permitted him to violate what the Pharisees, thought to be the letter of the law, but not the true intent of the law. Therefore the Son of Man (v. 5), who is superior to David, had every right to set aside a Pharisaic tradition, which only one of their regulations was not a divine law, in the service of God.
In Mark’s account of this Jesus tells them that, 27 “The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath.” (It was for man’s benefit, not to make things hard for them)
#2. Beside that He goes on to say that He is the Lord of the Sabbath. They did not understand that Jesus is the very Word of God, who became flesh, who gave that command to Moses and Israel in the first place.
Then Luke presents us another story which takes place on a different occasion, where Jesus dealt with this subject. Read 6-10 “On another Sabbath he went into the synagogue and was teaching, and a man was there whose right hand was shriveled. 7 The Pharisees and the teachers of the law were looking for a reason to accuse Jesus, so they watched him closely to see if he would heal on the Sabbath. 8 But Jesus knew what they were thinking and said to the man with the shriveled hand, “Get up and stand in front of everyone.” So he got up and stood there.
9 Then Jesus said to them, “I ask you, which is lawful on the Sabbath: to do good or to do evil, to save life or to destroy it?” 10 He looked around at them all, and then said to the man, “Stretch out your hand.” He did so, and his hand was completely restored. 11 But the Pharisees and the teachers of the law were furious and began to discuss with one another what they might do to Jesus.”
These teachers and Pharisees were now watching Jesus and were wanting to gather evidence to accuse Him of being a law breaker. Some think that they may have even planted this crippled man hoping that Jesus would heal him and do exactly what He did. According to their tradition the man did not need to be healed on the Sabbath. His life was not in danger of dying. So Jesus purposely heals the man intending to teach them another lesson concerning the Sabbath.
Concerning this the commentator Dr. Constable writes, ‘As the authoritative Son of Man, Jesus declared that it was lawful to do good on the Sabbath. Both incidents involved a controversy about the question: What is more important, ceremonial law or human need? God had instituted the Sabbath for the welfare of humankind.
As He questions them whether it was lawful to do good or evil on the Sabbath, there was only one answer that the religious leaders could give. It was lawful to do good and unlawful to do evil on the Sabbath. However, they refused to answer because their answer virtually would have given Jesus their approval to heal the man. They did not want to do that because they wanted to retain their traditional abstinence from Sabbath activities. Jesus proceeded to do good and healed the man’s hand, but He did so without performing any physical work. There was nothing the critics could point to, as an act that Jesus performed, for which they could condemn Him. This method of healing pointed to Jesus being a prophet sent from God, at least, and to His being God.”
After this these teachers are furious with Jesus and begin to plot against Him.
So what lessons if any are there in this for us? Are we under any obligation to keep the Sabbath seeing that it was part of the Mosaic Law?
In Hebrews chapter 8 it talks about Jesus being the mediator of a new covenant, one to replace the one given through Moses. Verses 6-7 says, “the ministry Jesus has received is as superior to theirs as the covenant of which he is mediator is superior to the old one, since the new covenant is established on better promises
7 For if there had been nothing wrong with that first covenant, no place would have been sought for another. 8 But God found fault with the people and said: “The days are coming, declares the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the people of Israel and with the people of Judah. 9 It will not be like the covenant I made with their ancestors when I took them by the hand to lead them out of Egypt, because they did not remain faithful to my covenant, and I turned away from them, declares the Lord
13 By calling this covenant “new,” he has made the first one obsolete; and what is obsolete and outdated will soon disappear.
Actually Jesus always compared the Sabbath to ceremonial laws, not to moral laws like lying, stealing, or committing adultery.
In Luke 13:15 Jesus implies that daily chores could be done on the Sabbath. In Luke 14:5 He indicates that even hard labor could be done in an emergency like when a child or a animal falls into a well and you need to get them out. In John 5:8. He told a healed man to carry his sleeping mat, even though there was no hurry. He even used the word “work” to describe his activity (v. 17).
All the Mosaic ritual laws became obsolete when Jesus died on the cross, and therefore it should be no surprise that the ritual of the Sabbath also became obsolete. Whereas all the moral aspects of the old covenant were mentioned in the New Testament and are still applicable for us today.
Now is it profitable for an individual to take a rest from their work at least on day a week. Of course it is. I believe that is one of the reasons why God commanded those Jews to set a day aside to rest in the first place. Also, like circumcision, when the Jews regularly celebrated the Sabbath, God said that it would be a sign that they were His covenant people.
So what other lesson can we learn from these stories? I believe that this is the main one: Jesus wanted to show that some things are just more important than religious rituals that we are in the habit of doing. Mind you, not that we should ignore those rituals like going to church on Sunday. Rather, when a crisis arises, or an individual needs our help, or if there is something good that we can and should do that God has put before us, there are times when those rituals are less important.
2nd And we also have to be careful not to judge others too quickly like those Pharisees. If people aren’t doing what we think they should be doing, rather than making any judgments we need to talk to them because they may have been serving in ways that may be more important to God than what we think is important. We need to remember that the greatest command for us today is to Love God with all our hearts and love others. That this kind of love should not only be seen in what we say, it should also be seen in our actions.
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