Sermon Tone Analysis

Mark 2:23-3:6

© February 5th, 2023 by Rev. Rick Goettsche SERIES: Mark

Human beings are big fans of rules.

Rules let us know what we should and shouldn’t do.

They guide our decisions, and they help us to know what is good and bad.

We have rules in business, rules for driving, rules for school, rules for our families, and rules for our games.

Rules help ensure order and consistency.

The question is who gets to make the rules?

Early on, it is important for parents to establish that they make the rules in the household.

It is important for teachers to establish (and often remind) their students that the teacher is the rule-maker, not the students.

And in sports, there are governing bodies that make the rules and referees or umpires whose job is to ensure the rules are followed and applied fairly.

Our passage this morning records two different clashes between Jesus and the religious leaders of His day.

The primary disagreement was over who gets to make the rules.

The religious leaders believed it was their sacred duty to make rules governing the Sabbath day—Jesus reminded them that was not the case at all.

As we unpack this week’s text, we will examine our own tendency to try to be the rule-makers and look at what God’s plan for the Sabbath is, and how we ought to follow it.

Picking Grain

The first encounter we’ll examine today occurs on a Sabbath day when Jesus and His followers were walking through a field of grain and apparently were hungry.

Here is how Mark records the story,

23 One Sabbath day as Jesus was walking through some grainfields, his disciples began breaking off heads of grain to eat.

24 But the Pharisees said to Jesus, “Look, why are they breaking the law by harvesting grain on the Sabbath?” 25 Jesus said to them, “Haven’t you ever read in the Scriptures what David did when he and his companions were hungry?

26 He went into the house of God (during the days when Abiathar was high priest) and broke the law by eating the sacred loaves of bread that only the priests are allowed to eat.

He also gave some to his companions.”

27 Then Jesus said to them, “The Sabbath was made to meet the needs of people, and not people to meet the requirements of the Sabbath.

28 So the Son of Man is Lord, even over the Sabbath!” (Mark 2:13-28, NLT)

As Jesus and the disciples were walking through a field, the disciples were breaking off heads of grain and eating them.

This was perfectly permissible under Jewish law under normal circumstances.

But this day was the Sabbath, and that’s what prompted the clash with the Pharisees.

The Sabbath principle comes from creation.

God created the world in six days and rested from His work on the seventh day.

He told us that we were to follow the same pattern of setting aside one day each week to rest from our work.

In Jewish culture, this was a very important commandment (after all, it was one of 10 rules literally written in stone!)

Not only did the Jews want to obey the Lord, but they also understood that by following this principle of Sabbath rest, they set themselves apart from the nations around them.

Observing the Sabbath was a way of demonstrating their trust and worship of God.

So from sundown on Friday until sundown on Saturday, all good Jews rested from their work and made it a day of rest and worship.

So, what was the issue with the disciples breaking off heads of grain to eat on the Sabbath?

The religious leaders had tried to define what constituted work so people knew what they could and couldn’t do on the Sabbath.

One of the rules said that you weren’t allowed to harvest grain on the Sabbath.

This made sense, since for a farmer harvesting grain would be part of his normal work.

But by the Pharisees’ rules the disciples breaking off heads of grain to eat was also considered harvesting, and therefore work, and thus, they were violating God’s command to remember the Sabbath day and keep it holy.

This is what is behind the confrontation that we see between the Pharisees and Jesus.

By the Pharisees’ judgment, Jesus was allowing His followers to violate one of God’s ten commandments, and this should not happen.

But Jesus sought to correct their understanding, showing them that their rules were not in line with what God intended the Sabbath to be.

Jesus references the story of David when he was on the run from Saul.

He and his men were starving, so they came to see Ahimelech the priest (who was Abiathar’s father).

Under the law, each week the priests were to make twelve loaves of bread (representing the twelve tribes of Israel) and set them in the tabernacle.

They would remain there as a testimony and an offering to the Lord until they were replaced with new loaves the following week.

After the old loaves were removed, they were to be eaten only by the priests and their families.

But the priest allowed David and his soldiers to take some of the bread because they were starving.

Technically speaking, this was a violation of God’s law.

And that was exactly Jesus’ point.

Jesus was telling the Pharisees that God was far less concerned with the rigid requirements of the law, and more concerned with the wellbeing of His people.

In other words, even though God’s law said that only the priests were to eat the bread of the presence, neither the priest nor David did anything wrong in this situation, because God would not have been honored by allowing these men to die of hunger simply to fulfill the ritual demands of the law.

It was better to care for these men than to hide behind ritual.

Jesus then clearly states His thesis: “The Sabbath was made to meet the needs of people, and not people to meet the requirements of the Sabbath.”

In other words, God didn’t create the law to keep the Sabbath simply to create a law—He created the law because it benefits people to have a day of rest!

We aren’t designed to run non-stop—we function better when we take time to rest and recharge.

The Sabbath is God’s way of helping us function as He intended!

No one could argue that the disciples were really doing any work.

They were hungry and were grabbing a snack.

They were not violating God’s Sabbath command.

But even if they were, Jesus’ point was that their wellbeing was actually the goal of the Sabbath from the beginning.

The goal was not to keep a list of rules.

It is at this point that Jesus really upset the Pharisees, because He said that, “The Son of Man is Lord, even over the Sabbath!” Jesus was claiming to have the authority to determine what was right and wrong to do on Sabbath.

This was a direct affront to the religious leaders, who seemed to believe that they were the lords of the Sabbath, as they had created an enormous list of laws that defined what people could and could not do.

The disciples were not violating any of God’slaws, they were only violating the laws these men had created.

But the Pharisees had come to view their laws as having equal weight with God’s, even though they likely would have told you they were just trying to clarify what God’s law meant.

We must guard against the tendency to do the same.

Religious people have a funny way of creating our own list of rules that we believe everyone else should follow.

We have rules about what you can wear, watch, listen to, eat, drink, do, etc.

Where God has given clear commands we must not compromise, but we must also be careful not to allow our own preferences or convictions to become rules we insist others must follow.

While it is perfectly acceptable to have convictions that you hold as a way of honoring the Lord, we must recognize that our convictions (or preferences) are not binding on others.

When we begin to look down on others because they do things we would not (even though they are not forbidden by the Lord), we are committing the same error the Pharisees did.

We must be careful not to go beyond what God has said, even as we try to flesh out how to apply it in our time and in our lives.

Healing a Hand

The second scene of the story occurs on a separate Sabbath day (Luke’s gospel tells us this).

Jesus and the disciples were in the synagogue (as was their normal custom) when Jesus and the Pharisees clashed once more.

Jesus went into the synagogue again and noticed a man with a deformed hand. 2 Since it was the Sabbath, Jesus’ enemies watched him closely.

If he healed the man’s hand, they planned to accuse him of working on the Sabbath.

3 Jesus said to the man with the deformed hand, “Come and stand in front of everyone.”

4 Then he turned to his critics and asked, “Does the law permit good deeds on the Sabbath, or is it a day for doing evil?

Is this a day to save life or to destroy it?”

But they wouldn’t answer him.

5 He looked around at them angrily and was deeply saddened by their hard hearts.

Then he said to the man, “Hold out your hand.”

So the man held out his hand, and it was restored!

6 At once the Pharisees went away and met with the supporters of Herod to plot how to kill Jesus.

(Mark 3:1-6, NLT)

While they were worshiping in the synagogue, we are told there was a man who had a deformed hand.

Some scholars have said that the language makes clear that it was the man’s right (or dominant) hand.

As such, this man would have been unable to work due to his infirmity.

Mark then tells us that because it was the Sabbath, Jesus’ enemies (interesting that this is how Mark describes the religious leaders) were watching Him closely, trying to find something for which they could attack Him.

It is noteworthy that instead of worshiping the Lord, they were trying to find ammunition to attack and discredit Jesus.

Jesus surely knew what was going on but decided to proceed anyway.

He called to the man with the deformed hand and asked him to stand in front of everyone.

Putting together Matthew and Mark’s account, it seems like the Pharisees actually began the encounter by asking Jesus if it was lawful to heal on the Sabbath.

Jesus points out that their own laws permitted a person to rescue a sheep that had fallen into a well on the Sabbath, then He asks two rhetorical questions of the Pharisees: Does the law permit doing good on the Sabbath or is it a day for doing evil?

Secondly, He asked if the Sabbath was a day to save life or destroy it?

Jesus was cutting right to the heart of the matter, cutting through all the pretense that might otherwise have clouded the issue.

The Pharisees, seeing they could not refute what Jesus was saying, simply remained silent.

Mark tells us that Jesus looked at them angrily and was saddened by their hard hearts.