Keep the Sabbath day Holy?

Luke 6:1-5

Luke 6:1-5, Now it happened on the second Sabbath after the first that He went through the grainfields. And His disciples plucked the heads of grain and ate them, rubbing them in their hands. 2 And some of the Pharisees said to them, “Why are you doing what is not lawful to do on the Sabbath?” 3 But Jesus answering them said, “Have you not even read this, what David did when he was hungry, he and those who were with him: 4 how he went into the house of God, took and ate the showbread, and also gave some to those with him, which is not lawful for any but the priests to eat?” 5 And He said to them, “The Son of Man is also Lord of the Sabbath.”

The gospel of Luke begins with so much joy. Angelic hosts praising God and saying, "Glory to God in the highest,"for the birth of the Messiah. Shepherds, Joseph and Mary, Elizabeth, Zacharias, Simeon, Anna, the old folks in the temple who were part of the Jewish remnant waiting and waiting for the long-expected Jesus who

finally came. The gospel began with such hope as do the other gospels. But it didn't take long for the realization to set in that there would be a severe conflict and that Jesus would generate deadly hostility. The response to His ministry at first was positive. He was in tremendous demand. They had never heard anybody like Him.

They had never seen anybody like Him. No one had ever done the miracles that He had done of healing, the casting out of demons. The crowds wanted Him all the time. Jesus was teaching and there were Pharisees and teachers of the law sitting there who had come from every village of Galilee and Judea and from Jerusalem.

By the time we come into chapter 6, the hostility has reached a severe level. The Jewish leaders, the Pharisees and the scribes who were really the architects of Judaism, who were viewed as the leaders, who were the reigning theologians, they viewed Jesus as the most dangerous person alive, the severest threat to their religion and their religious position and power.

Jesus was the most powerful teacher the world ever saw, or ever will see. He was attacking them. He was attacking their

religion. He was attacking what some would say was the best part of them. He wasn't attacking the prostitutes He wasn't attacking the tax collectors, He wasn't attacking the scum of the society. He not only attacked the religious leaders, but He attacked them at the foundations of their religious system as well as at the level of their own false spirituality. His attack was relentless.

Today when we hear the word "ecumenical,” or “ecumenism," which is a word that simply means "getting everybody together,"and the mood of the day is tolerance. Let us find what we have in common, and we will all get together for the sake of morality and for the sake of righteousness and for the sake of quote-unquote "the kingdom of God."

Jesus took the very opposite approach. Jesus didn't attack the immorality of His society. Obviously, He was concerned about sin, and He called sinners to repentance. But Jesus attacked the religious establishment because they were the condemners of souls, because they offered people

the false solution, the deceptive lie, the ultimate delusion that God is pleased with you when He's not. So, Jesus attacked that system and every time there was a point of conflict, He aggravated it. It was almost as if every time He made a wound, He poured salt in it. It started from the very beginning to be so.

The message in chapter 4 by Jesus was made clear. I came for the poor, prisoners, blind, and oppressed, the downcast, the outcast, the people who know they are spiritually bankrupt and so forth. In doing so, Jesus angered the self-righteous people sitting in that synagogue who had owned the religion of Judaism, orchestrated by the rabbis and the Pharisees, He infuriated them to such a degree that even the synagogue in His own hometown, before the day was over, they tried to kill Him by throwing Him off a cliff.

Jesus assaulted that system because that system needed to be assaulted. It wasn't that He just spoke in generalities about what was wrong with the system. When He had an occasion to meet with Pharisees or scribes who were the leaders of that system, He confronted them face to face.

Why did Jesus do that? Because divine truth was more important than anything else. Do you know why Jesus always escalated the conflict? Because He always spoke the truth.

Will Mormons go to heaven? No. Will the Jews go to heaven? Reject Jesus as Messiah? No. Jesus didn't escalate the conflict by being insensitive. He didn't escalate the conflict by being ungracious. The conflict escalated of itself because He spoke the truth.

Every time there was conflict, instead of trying to relieve the tension, instead of trying to ease the conflict, He escalated it. He increased it by always being absolutely truthful. The previous section we saw that the gospel is incompatible with error in any form.

When the Pharisees come to Jesus and say, "Why are You doing this? This is not according to our law."

Maybe we could create an organization called the National Conference on the Gospel and Judaism and we could meet, and we could find common ground? Jesus didn't do that. There wasn't any common ground because you had the truth and you had error and there is no common ground. It isn't that you want to pick a fight for the sake of a fight. It isn't that you want to be ungracious for the sake of being ungracious.

The truth that matters more than anything else. The truth will have the effect of exposing everything else as error and people who are in that error aren't happy about that. Jesus was compelled by the truth. When conflict occurred, He went immediately to the truth and took it to another level so that there was this continual escalation of their hostility.

Immense implications in a day when tolerance has become the mode that is acceptable. Jesus knew that the gospel was incompatible with any other form of religion. He knew that the truth was incompatible with error. So, Jesus continued to elevate the truth and therefore escalate the conflict with error.

The Pharisees and scribes were probably insulted by Jesus because obviously Jesus had divine power. There was no way to deny His miracles. He banished disease from Palestine. They were there when He healed the paralyzed man who came down through the roof in chapter 5. There was no way to deny those miracles. They were all over the place, happening at a massive level. There was no way to deny that He was casting out demons. There was no way to deny that He was the most profound speaker of truth that had ever been heard by anybody. There was no way to deny that He had divine power.

It was that when Jesus, this Messiah, this man of God, chose His official authoritative representatives we call them the disciples or the apostles He didn't choose a Pharisee or a scribe. In fact, He chose a bunch of nobodies from up in Galilee who weren't even educated, fishermen and of all abominations, a tax collector, and a lot of other common people.

He didn't say, "I am coming into Israel to hold some evangelistic crusades and I need to form a committee. I am going to take some Pharisees, Sadducees, and scribes. We are going to involve them."Not going to happen. But there was no possibility of an alliance! Impossible.

What fellowship has light with darkness?

What concord has Christ with Satan? Chapter 6 gets to the heart of this conflict surrounds the Sabbath. Because Judaism at that time has its anchor Sabbath observance. That routine, every seventh day, every Saturday from sundown Friday to sundown Saturday, that is the anchor.

Jesus’ complete contempt for their observance of the Sabbath. He shows nothing but disdain for it and this is really hitting them at the very core of their system because, for the most part, self-righteousness and trying to earn your salvation by your works. It came down to how you observed the regulations of the Sabbath. If you did all the Sabbath rules, you had earned your righteousness.

They were wrong about the Sabbath and Jesus was concerned about the truth. So, the truth He literally dropped like a bomb in the middle of their Sabbath mentality. Jesus was forcing people to choose. He didn't come in and say, we are going to preach the gospel, but we are going to get all these various religions together.

Jesus came in and said this is the truth, this alone is the truth, everything else is a lie, make your choice. You choose the gospel of Jesus Christ,

the gospel of humility, the gospel of repentance, the gospel of grace, the gospel of faith, and not spiritual pride, self-righteousness, merit and works. Which is what Judaism being and it's what every religion in the world is, except the truth of Christianity. Jesus was constantly drawing a big, thick line. Choose this or choose that.

Here is the truth, and that's the lie. The choice is still the same. If you are going to preach the gospel faithfully, the gospel is singular, it is exclusive. It doesn't mingle or mix with anything, as we learned at the end of chapter 5.

• You can't bring the gospel in like a new piece of garment and sew it into old Judaism.
• You can't bring the gospel like new wine and put it into the old wineskins of Judaism.
• You can't mingle the truth with error.

You can't mingle a gospel of grace and faith, a gospel of humility and repentance with a religion of spiritual pride, self- righteousness, merit and works, which is what every other

religion in the world is under any name, including the Judaism of the time of Jesus. The Jews took Sabbath very seriously. Not just at the time of Jesus, they really had inherited an accumulated tradition that had been sort of accumulating for centuries.

The Sabbath day had become literally a collection point for complex restrictions that had been mounting as rabbis made regulations. They interpreted them and reinterpreted until finally this accumulation of things made the seventh day. It was repressive. It was ridiculously strict.

Jesus wanted to show the difference between that and the true heart of God. V 1, Now it happened on the second Sabbath after the first that He went through the grainfields. And His disciples plucked the heads of grain and ate them, rubbing them in their hands.

Now we are introduced into Jesus'attitude toward the Sabbath. The word Sabbaton is the Greek word for Sabbath. So, this is some kind of complete cessation. Sabbath means to completely cease. The word was used to describe the seventh day command.

Back in the Ten Commandments, God instituted the Sabbath law.

Exodus 20:9-11, Six days you shall labour and do all your work, 10 but the seventh day is the Sabbath of the Lord your God. In it you shall do no work: you, nor your son, nor your daughter, nor your male servant, nor your female servant, nor your cattle, nor your stranger who is within your gates. 11 For in six days the Lord made the heavens and the earth, the sea, and all that is in them, and rested the seventh day. Therefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and hallowed it.

What is God's Sabbath law? Don't work. Take a day off, refresh your body, refresh your spirit, refresh your relationships in the family, enjoy the creation, go out and see what God has made. Take a walk. Go to the shore. Take a swim.

Do whatever you want, just don't work. This is a day of restoration, of recreation. That's all God ever said about it. Just rest. It was a complete cessation. Although God rested from His creation on the seventh day in Genesis, He didn't command man to do that until the law of Moses.

Seventh day rest was one of the Ten Commandments. It was ceremonial, rather than moral and thus it is not repeated in the New Testament because it wasn't a part of moral law. But it was just a general gift from God to Israel and I think it's a very wise thing in general, beyond even the nation Israel, although God didn't require it before and doesn't require it in the New Testament. Take a day off, enjoy.

In the development of Sabbath, they began to use it as a day to worship. But then their religion became so external, and so hypocritical and so superficial that they began to look for ways that they could earn their salvation with God by filling that day with all kinds of rules and regulations that if you kept you would please God and earn salvation. None of which are biblical.

It finally became the most painful day of the week. People hated it. It was a day of tremendous restriction. The Talmud there are twenty-four chapters of Sabbath laws required. One rabbi, says the Talmud, spent two and a half years in the study of one of those twenty-four trying to figure out all its ramifications. It was a ridiculously complex system by which you could earn your salvation by maintaining all these strictures.

You could travel no more than 3,000 feet from home. Unless on Friday before the Sabbath you had planted food at the 3,000-foot point and then you could go 3,000 more because you would constitute that point as a home because your food was there.

Now if you lived down a long, narrow street and you might have been a few hundred feet down from the end of the street or the end of the alley, you could take a piece of wood and put it across the end of the street or alley or you could take a piece of rope and put it across the end of the alley, or you could take a piece of wire and string it across the end of the alley and that would, in the eyes of God, turn it into a doorway and you could consider that the front door of your house so you could go 3,000 feet from there.

You couldn't carry anything on your person that weighed more than a dried fig. There goes your wallet and certainly there goes your purse. But you could carry half a fig two times on the Sabbath. You couldn't eat any of the forbidden. There were all kinds of food forbidden on the Sabbath. You couldn't eat any forbidden food larger than an olive. If you put an olive in your mouth and spit it out because it was bad, the Talmud said you couldn't replace it with a good one because your palate had tasted the flavour of the first one.

Now remember, your salvation depends on this. This is how the people thought. You are pleasing God. If you threw an object in the air, you could catch it with this hand that you threw it with, but if you caught it with the other hand, it was sin because there's less work in doing that than that.

If you were in one place and your arm stretched to reach for food and the Sabbath overtook you, you had to drop the food rather than bring back your arm or you had carried a burden and sinned. A tailor couldn't carry his needle.

A scribe couldn't carry his pen. A pupil couldn't carry his books. You couldn't even examine your clothes before you put them on, lest in the examining, meaning kind of brushing and shaking, you killed an insect. Wool couldn't be dyed. Nothing could be sold or bought or washed.

A letter could not be sent even with a heathen. No fire could be lit. No fire could be put out. Cold water could be poured on warm, but warm couldn't be poured on cold. An egg couldn't be boiled even if you buried it in the hot sand, which is how they would boil an egg in the desert.

You couldn't take a bath for fear that the water would flow off you and wash the floor. You couldn't move a chair since it might make a rut and that would be too much like ploughing. Women could not look in a mirror or put on any jewellery.

If she were to find a white hair, she had to resist the temptation to pull it out. When it came to grain and food, the laws are just staggering. You could have no more grain than a lamb's mouth full. That's the max amount you could pick.

You couldn't leave a radish in the salt because it would make a pickle. The laws go on endlessly about wine, about honey, about milk, about spitting, about getting dirt off your clothes. You could have enough ink to write two Hebrew letters.

You could carry enough wax to fill a small hole somewhere. You could stick a wad in your ear if you had an earache, but you couldn't put on false teeth. This is how it goes, twenty-four chapters of this. The following 39 are forbidden things.

The list from Alfred Edersheim, The Life and Times of Jesus the Messiah, a classic work on the history of the people of Israel.

They are forbidden

• sowing,
• ploughing,
• reaping,
• binding sheaves,
• threshing,
• winnowing,
• sifting,
• grinding,
• sifting in a sieve,
• kneading,
• baking,
• shearing the wool,
• washing it,
• beating it,
• dying it,
• spinning,
• putting it on the weaver's beam,
• making two threads,
• weaving two threads,
• separating two threads,
• making a knot,
• undoing a knot,
• sewing two stitches,
• catching deer,
• killing, skinning,
• salting,

• preparing its skin,
• scraping off its hair,
• cutting it up,
• writing two letters,
• scraping in order to write two letters,
• building, pulling down,
• extinguishing the fire,
• lighting the fire,
• beating with the hammer, and
• carrying one thing from one place to another.

What kind of a fun day is that? This is supposed to be the rest. Jesus said this to the Jews.

Matthew 11:28-30, Come to Me, all you who labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. 29 Take My yoke upon you and learn from Me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. 30 For My yoke is easy and My burden is light.” As He was comparing Himself with this ridiculous Sabbath stuff that the people were convinced was what earned their salvation, rituals and ceremonies and regulations, ad infinitum, ad nauseam. The Jews were dead serious about this.

It still hangs around today in modern Israel. Even today they eat only leftover food and drink day-old coffee because they can't prepare anything, cook anything. Sabbath elevator that has no buttons on it. It just goes up, hits every floor, and goes down and hits every floor so that you don't have to push a button. That's work.

They have Sabbath timers in the houses that turn the lights on and turn the lights off on the Sabbath because they can't start a fire or turn one out. This is ridiculous. But this was the heart of their religion. the Sabbath was the staple of their system.

V 1, Now it happened on the second Sabbath after the first that He went through the grainfields. And His disciples plucked the heads of grain and ate them, rubbing them in their hands. Jesus was going through some grain fields probably wheat or barley. The grain was ripe, probably means it was spring or summer. In the Jordan Valley, usually the grain ripens in April and east of there in August.

So, harvest was perhaps near, the fields were full of grain ripened. Basically, the way you travelled in the land was through the fields. The fields were laid out in long narrow strips and

between them, between the rows, were paths and that's how people went places. Roads were not always distinguishable from fields because the paths went right through the fields and that's how people went from one place to another.

God made a wonderful provision in the Old Testament.

Deuteronomy 23:25, When you come into your neighbour’s standing grain, you may pluck the heads with your hand, but you shall not use a sickle on your neighbour’s standing grain.

This is what God said, "When you enter your neighbour’s standing grain,” you're going through his field, “there you may pluck the heads with your hand, but you shall not put a sickle in your neighbour’s standing grain." You can't go over and harvest his crop and haul it off. But when you are walking through his field, if you are hungry, you can pop off whatever you can get in your hand. You can rub it together and when you rub it together it takes the outside shell off and you can blow away the chaff and what you have is the grain and you can get some nourishment. You can do that.

God's law provided for a wonderful way in which the people of Israel could enjoy the blessing of the land without necessarily owning the crop. Exactly that is what the disciples were doing.

They were doing what God had provided them to do in that wonderful provision. The disciples were hungry along with Jesus, they were picking, eating the grain, rubbing them in their hands. V 2, And some of the Pharisees said to them, “Why are you doing what is not lawful to do on the Sabbath?”

Where did the Pharisee’s come from? Well somewhere inside 3,000 feet unless they were doing a tag-team deal. But they are always going to be around, and they were dogging the steps of Jesus. They were looking for any way that they can indict Him and discredit Him.

Some of the Pharisees said, “Why are you doing what is not lawful to do on the Sabbath?” Did the Sabbath law of Exodus 20 say anything about this? Absolutely nothing!

Exodus 20:11, For in six days the Lord made the heavens and the earth, the sea, and all that is in them, and rested the seventh day. Therefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and hallowed it.

It didn't say anything about this. But they had this system and there they were with their constant scrutiny looking for any way to get rid of Jesus. This is very serious stuff and according to the Talmud it says, "In case a woman rolls wheat, rolls it to remove the husks, it is sifting and if she rubs the heads of wheat, it is threshing, and if she cleans off the shell it is sifting, and if she bruises the ear, it is grinding. And if she throws it in her hand, it is winnowing. You can't do that on the Sabbath.

The rabbis said that reaping and grinding grain can only be done to something the size of one dried fig or less. Anymore produces guilt. The Pharisees had violated a lot of those rules. They had been reaping, threshing, sifting, grinding, winnowing, and preparing food. The real question of the Pharisees is, "Why do You have such utter disdain for our religion?

It wasn’t that they jumped out behind a bush. Why do You do this? Why do you so flagrantly do this? Jesus'response is perfect. V 3-4, But Jesus answering them said, “Have you not even read this, what David did when he was hungry, he and those who were with him: 4 how he went into the house of God, took and

ate the showbread, and also gave some to those with him, which is not lawful for any but the priests to eat?” They knew the story He was about to tell but they never understood its meaning. They were great at knowing the story but not the meaning.

It's really a fascinating story.

Leviticus 24:5-9, “And you shall take fine flour and bake twelve cakes with it. Two-tenths of an ephah shall be in each cake. 6 You shall set them in two rows, six in a row, on the pure gold table before the Lord. 7 And you shall put pure frankincense on each row, that it may be on the bread for a memorial, an offering made by fire to the Lord. 8 Every Sabbath he shall set it in order before the Lord continually, being taken from the children of Israel by an everlasting covenant. 9 And it shall be for Aaron and his sons, and they shall eat it in a holy place; for it is most holy to him from the offerings of the Lord made by fire, by a perpetual statute.”

God laid down some things for the tabernacle, right, certain things in the tabernacle. One of the things that God wanted in the tabernacle was a golden table, golden table in the holy place. On the golden table was the showbread. Have you ever heard that? Or as it's called: “the bread of the presence."

According to Leviticus 24, the old bread that comes off can be eaten only by the priests because it has been consecrated to God, so it can't just be treated like common bread, can't be sold, or just given to any common person because it has special consecrated significance. Only the priests can eat it.

Who wants seven-day-old bread anyway? This is that kind of flat bread and without preservatives it becomes a cracker in a dry climate and it's edible. So, they would eat it and that was the provision. In the story David lied, created all kinds of problems, but the Lord doesn't deal with that. David is being chased by Saul.

David has been the anointed king. He's going to replace Saul. Saul wants to kill him. So, David is running from a place called Gibeah and he's running away. He's got a few guys with him, his friends, trying to escape from Saul. They come down to a place called Nob.

Nob is a mile outside Jerusalem. It's right on the edge of Jerusalem. It's where the tabernacle was. David gets down there. He is hungry and those that are with him are hungry. He goes to the tabernacle and there is a priest there. His name is Ahimelech. Apparently Abiathar was the high priest of that time. Gospel of Mark makes reference to that. But Ahimelech

was the priest that David ran into, and he says to this priest that he is hungry.

1 Samuel 21:1-6, Now David came to Nob, to Ahimelech the priest. And Ahimelech was afraid when he met David, and said to him, “Why are you alone, and no one is with you?” 2 So David said to Ahimelech the priest, “The king has ordered me on some business, and said to me, ‘Do not let anyone know anything about the business on which I send you, or what I have commanded you.’ And I have directed my young men to such and such a place. 3 Now therefore, what have you on hand? Give me five loaves of bread in my hand, or whatever can be found.” 4 And the priest answered David and said, “There is no common bread on hand; but there is holy bread, if the young men have at least kept themselves from women.” 5 Then David answered the priest, and said to him, “Truly, women have been kept from us about three days since I came out. And the vessels of the young men are holy, and the bread is in effect common, even though it was consecrated in the vessel this day.” 6 So the priest gave him holy bread; for there was no bread there but the showbread which had been taken from before the Lord, in order to put hot bread in its place on the day when it was taken away. David is the king even though he is not yet taken his throne and these men are with him, "I am hungry, my men need bread."

David says, "I need five loaves of bread." The priest wanted to make sure that they were clean. He said there is this holy bread, the showbread, the bread of the presence. It may well have been a Sabbath and the new bread had been put there and the old bread taken off.

There was no bread there but the bread of the presence which was removed from before the Lord in order to put hot bread in its place, so the old bread that came off the priest said take it and eat.

What's the point? Mercy and compassion is far more important than ceremony, far more important than ritual. That was an indictment of the whole system of Judaism. The whole Sabbath system was oppressive, merciless, void of compassion, grace, kindness.

As we shall see in the next passage, they get irritated at Jesus because He healed somebody on the Sabbath. It was like the Sabbath was supposed to be the most painful day of the week. They missed the whole point. David entered the house of God, and took and ate the consecrated bread, the showbread, the bread of presence,

which is not lawful for any to eat except the priest alone and he gave it to his companions and God never even reprimanded him for that. That priest, that Ahimelech, understood that hunger and mercy toward somebody who's hungry and compassion and kindness and goodness is more important than ceremony.

The Pharisees didn't get that. They didn't get it at all. They were all about the shallow superficial and ceremonial. If David could be allowed by a priest to violate a divine regulation maybe on a Sabbath, then the disciples could be allowed by the Son of God to violate.

An unbiblical regulation that you couldn't take a little grain and rub it in your hands and eat. You meet people today who say they are Sabbatarian, and I always wonder whether they are Sabbatarians like Exodus 20, or whether they are Sabbatarians like some kind of non- biblical, accumulated Judaism.

The day was meant for rest. The day was meant for relaxation, refreshment, recreation. The day was meant to look at the wonders of God's glory and to worship Him.

The day was meant for meeting needs and showing mercy and showing compassion. Ceremony and ritual is never to be burdensome. David was allowed to violate a divine law to fulfil the truest law of mercy. Certainly, Jesus and His disciples could violate a human law to fulfil the true law of mercy.

Then Jesus dropped the bomb. At this point He could have said, "I am sorry we offended you guys, please forgive us."He didn't. V 5, And He said to them, “The Son of Man is also Lord of the Sabbath.” Jesus says that you aren't in charge of the Sabbath, I am.

This messianic title drawn from Daniel 7:13, the greater than David. Jesus said,

• I am the Lord of the Sabbath,
• I will interpret the will of God on the Sabbath,
• I will interpret the law of God.
• I will interpret the Word of God.
• I will tell you what God means by what He says.

• I will tell you what the Sabbath is to be and what it's not to be.
• You are not in charge of the Sabbath, I am.

You don't rule the Sabbath, you don't set the standards. I do. Jesus is the great interpreter of God's law. He's the great interpreter of God's Word. He's the great interpreter of God's will. You can never ever understand the Old Testament law without the New Testament interpretation of that law by Christ and the apostles who wrote the words that Christ wanted them to write to interpret the truth.

Jesus is the interpreter of God's will, God's law, and God's Word. Mark tells us that He also said, "Man was not made for the Sabbath, but the Sabbath was made for man."

Micah 6:8, "What does God require of You but to do justice, to love kindness, to walk humbly with your God."

They didn't have any kindness, or mercy, or compassion.

Matthew 23:4, For they bind heavy burdens, hard to bear, and lay them on men’s shoulders; but they themselves will not move them with one of their fingers.

The legalists knew nothing about grace. The Lord offered only grace. They knew nothing about humility. He came only to the humble. They thought they were righteous and therefore they were the enemies of true righteousness.

To live as a Christian is to live with a God who is merciful.

Hebrews 4:16, Let us therefore come boldly to the throne of grace, that we may obtain mercy and find grace to help in time of need. Jesus said, "I don't care what your religious system says, you're not in charge of the truth. I don't care how you interpret Scripture, you're not the interpreter, I am. I am Lord of the Sabbath." He was saying, "I am the Lord of the truth, the true meaning of Sabbath, the true meaning of rest, the true meaning of worship and all that the law of God describes." To live as a Christian then is to live under the lordship of Christ!

There is no compatibility between a system of self- righteousness, spiritual pride, merit, and works by whatever

name and the true gospel of repentance, humility, grace, and faith. They are utterly incompatible.