Religion in Conflict Pt. 2

Mark  •  Sermon  •  Submitted   •  Presented   •  40:53
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Introduction

Good morning and welcome to Dishman Baptist Church. As always it is a pleasure to have you here with us this morning - whether you are physically present or virtually present through our online stream we are blessed to be able to serve our Lord and to worship with you this morning. Please take your Bibles and open them with me to Mark 2, Mark 2. Thank you Chuck for doing such a great job leading us into God’s Word last week and I think I speak for everyone when I say thank you for being back at the helm of our musical worship endeavors today instead of me.
This morning we’re going to finish our time in Mark 2 by looking at another instance of conflict in the life and ministry of Christ. It would seem that after such a grand beginning to his Gospel, Mark has sought to frame for us the reality of Christ’s ministry. It started off so well in Capernaum’s synagogue with the healing of a man with an unclean spirit and extraordinarily authoritative teaching. That was followed by a fruitful evening of ministry and then a speaking tour throughout Galilee. But then Christ returns to Capernaum and you would think that His ministry would continue to flourish but Mark demonstrates that there is a significant difference between our expectations for Christ’s ministry and the reality. It is not always easy. There will be conflicts and sometimes the worst of the conflicts will come from those who think they are inside the camp. None of these issues that Christ has faced over the last few weeks came from external sources but instead they were brought by those who should have known better but instead had surrendered the truth to their own agendas or ideals.
The first challenge came when Christ had the audacity to pronounce a man’s sins forgiven. In doing so He placed Himself on equal standing with God. This is really the fundamental issue that underlies every other issue in the church - there are really only two. The first is found here - is Christ who He says He is? And the second is that if He is who He says He is could He have produced a perfect and inerrant Word that would reveal Himself to us and what His desires are for us. As the Son of God and the Creator of the Universe it is within His purview to determine who is worth being saved - not on anyone’s personal or inherent merit but instead on His sovereign choosing, love and kindness. The next kerfuffle we see in chapter 2 addresses this as those who thought they were saved by their good works were upset by Jesus’ choice in dinner companions. An important note to make here is that while Jesus came to save the sick, He didn’t leave them identifying with their sin. There were no tax collecting Christians or woman at the well Christians. They were simply Christians. And then last week Chuck did an excellent job of framing the conflict as one of the incompatibility of the New Covenant that Jesus was bringing in with the Old Covenant ways of the Pharisees and scribes. This week’s passage is going to present the same dilemma from a different perspective.
This morning we’re going to be looking at Mark 2:23-28.
Mark 2:23–28 CSB
On the Sabbath he was going through the grainfields, and his disciples began to make their way, picking some heads of grain. The Pharisees said to him, “Look, why are they doing what is not lawful on the Sabbath?” He said to them, “Have you never read what David and those who were with him did when he was in need and hungry— how he entered the house of God in the time of Abiathar the high priest and ate the bread of the Presence—which is not lawful for anyone to eat except the priests—and also gave some to his companions?” Then he told them, “The Sabbath was made for man and not man for the Sabbath. So then, the Son of Man is Lord even of the Sabbath.”

The Predicament

Mark 2:23-24
I am old enough to remember when the malls closed at 5 on Sundays. I had to call my mom and check but I did have Sunday clothes and other clothes. But I do remember one thing about those Sunday clothes - it was in your life’s interest not to get them dirty before church. I am not old enough to remember but have been told by my mother that when she was in high school she wouldn’t even go to movies because her parents didn’t want it to be reported in the newspaper that she’d been at a movie if she died in a car accident on the way home. That’s a bit of an extreme example. There may be some of you who think that the first two illustrations were good and that we would do well as a society to return to those days again. But the reason I mention them here is not to evoke some sort of nostalgic response or a desire for the brand of Christianity that permeated our nation from the close of World War 2 until sometime in the late 80’s or early 90’s. The reason I mention them is they were indicators not of a person’s salvific standing before Christ but instead of their adherence to external regulations that had become a part of Christianity.
The Jewish religion in the first century and particularly the observation of the Sabbath had fallen prey to just this sort of practice. The Sabbath had been established at Creation when God rested on the seventh day after His creative work was finished.
Genesis 2:1–3 CSB
So the heavens and the earth and everything in them were completed. On the seventh day God had completed his work that he had done, and he rested on the seventh day from all his work that he had done. God blessed the seventh day and declared it holy, for on it he rested from all his work of creation.
And then when delivering the law to Moses, God chose to codify the standards of Sabbath rest for His people the Jews
Exodus 20:8–11 CSB
Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy: You are to labor six days and do all your work, but the seventh day is a Sabbath to the Lord your God. You must not do any work—you, your son or daughter, your male or female servant, your livestock, or the resident alien who is within your city gates. For the Lord made the heavens and the earth, the sea, and everything in them in six days; then he rested on the seventh day. Therefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and declared it holy.
Under the leadership of the priests and the kings throughout the histories of the Old Testament, the Sabbatarian practice had been perverted and minimized to the point that the prophet Amos would admonish the people of the northern kingdom of Israel
Amos 8:4–6 CSB
Hear this, you who trample on the needy and do away with the poor of the land, asking, “When will the New Moon be over so we may sell grain, and the Sabbath, so we may market wheat? We can reduce the measure while increasing the price and cheat with dishonest scales. We can buy the poor with silver and the needy for a pair of sandals and even sell the chaff!”
They still practiced the Sabbath but the importance of the standards in their lives had become minimal because of their greed and avarice.
After the return from Babylon with the repair of the Temple came the rekindling of the importance of religion in the lives of the Jews. As I have mentioned the Pharisees, Sadducees and Essenes developed as religious parties during this time and the Pharisees in particular took a deep interest in the practice of the fourth commandment and keeping the Sabbath day holy. So much so that they had developed 39 specific activities that could not be practiced on the Sabbath.
People were limited to 1,999 paces or a travel distance of about 3,000 yards on the Sabbath - needless to say not too many people were meeting their step goals. The most weight that you could carry on the Sabbath day was the weight of a dried fig - now I found out that 1 cup of dried figs amounts to about 10 figs and that one cup is roughly equal to 1/3 of a pound. Now parents of little ones don’t worry you could have carried you child - even if they had a stone in their hand that surpassed the weight of a dried fig. If you were carrying your dried fig in your hand and you threw it up in the air and you caught it with a different hand you were in violation of the law. There were 24 chapters in the Jerusalem Talmud that dealt with regulations on the Sabbath.
So here are Jesus and His disciples. The text says
Mark 2:23–24 CSB
On the Sabbath he was going through the grainfields, and his disciples began to make their way, picking some heads of grain. The Pharisees said to him, “Look, why are they doing what is not lawful on the Sabbath?”
They were in deep trouble. In one sentence Mark describes the disciples as having broken at least 4 Sabbath commands. The first is that they were clearly beyond their 1,999 pace limit. But they were also guilty of picking or harvesting grain, sifting and threshing the grain as they would roll it between their hands to separate the wheat and chaff, winnowing as they would throw away the chaff and eating the grain. None of these were permitted on the Sabbath.
The Pharisees were right there to challenge Jesus. It is interesting to note the progression that has taken place throughout these incidents. When Jesus called Levi it was the disciples that the Pharisees confronted. When the disciples were not fasting and now here when they are picking grains it is Jesus who they accost. And we need to understand that the issue here is not that they were picking some one else’s wheat and eating it. This was provided for in the ancient Israelite culture. While there were many roads that connected towns, much of the travel in first century Israel was effected by the use of well worn trails that traversed through fields. God made a provision for this reality in Deuteronomy
Deuteronomy 23:25 CSB
When you enter your neighbor’s standing grain, you may pluck heads of grain with your hand, but do not put a sickle to your neighbor’s grain.
So the disciples are not breaking any real law here by plucking grains and eating - except for the self-imposed standards of the Pharisees. It is also important to note that the Pharisees were also in violation of the Sabbath restrictions. In order to be close enough to witness the disciple’s grain picking activities the Pharisees would also have to have been outside their 1,999 pace limit. But as is so often the case they choose to ignore their violations and instead question Jesus about the behavior of His disciples - in effect implicating Him as well in their sin.
One important note to make before we move on to Jesus response - Jesus was not in sin by either His violation of the Sabbath or by the implication that the Pharisees were making that His disciples were in violation and so He was as well. I want to make that clear to anyone who is here or who may be watching this online who may not come from a church background. As we looked at when we studied Jesus temptations, Jesus as both truly God and truly man was incapable of sin. If you want to review that message it is available on our website entitled “Peaks and Valleys Pt. 1”. But I want to make it very clear before I move on that Jesus never sinned and so even His perceived violation of the Sabbath principles here is for a greater purpose. Even by walking through the grain fields He was not in sin as the only principles He and His disciples were violating in truth were the man-made principles set in place by the Pharisees.
As we just looked at even the fourth commandment is very scant in its prescriptive standards with respect to the Sabbath. Even one of the rabbis writing on the multitude of restrictions with respect to what Scripture actually wrote in the Mishnah Hagiga “The rules about the sabbath, festal offerings, and sacrilege are as mountains hanging by a hair, for Scripture is scanty and the rules are many.” Even they knew their rules were founded on scanty information. So I just wanted to make sure that was clear before we move on to look at Jesus response to the Pharisee’s charge.

The Precedent

Mark 2:25-26
Jesus response to the Pharisees is remarkable. Unlike most legal discussions of both His own day and ours, He doesn’t seek to make a legal defense from the laws of Israel. In our modern context that would sound something like a lawyer who sites previous case law (in the case of plaintiff a vs. defendant b this precedent was set) but instead He pulls from an anecdote to make His case. This usually isn’t a very effective method of argumentation - it’s much like a younger sibling calling on the actions of an older sibling to defend his own actions. That usually doesn’t make the case that he was in the right but rather invokes the age old maxim “two wrongs do not make a right”.
Anyone who likes to paint Jesus simply as this nice, meek and mild “Clark Kent” figure has never really read the New Testament. His initial words to the Pharisees would have immediately goaded them into a visceral response. Look at what He says
Mark 2:25 CSB
He said to them, “Have you never read what David and those who were with him did when he was in need and hungry—
He challenges them “Have you never read”? These were the most learned men in Israel. They knew the Torah, the Histories and the Writings by heart. They lived, ate and breathed Scripture. And yet He has the temerity to question them? The issue wasn’t really that they had never read - it was more that what they had read hadn’t impacted their hearts. Jesus knew that they had read the Scriptures, that they in fact prided themselves on their knowledge of the Scriptures. He also knew that they hadn’t allowed what they had read to become more than simple head knowledge. In a sense He asks them two questions in one - not only as Dr. MacArthur says in his commentary on this passage “If you are such fastidious students of Scripture, why don’t you know what it says?” but also “If you are such fastidious students of Scripture, why don’t you do what it says?”
While He may not appeal to a legal precedent for support, Jesus could hardly have picked a more credible subject than David for His example. David, the second king of Israel, the man after God’s own heart, the greatest king in Israel’s history but also the one from who’s line the Pharisees as well as the rest of the nation of Israel were anticipating the Messiah to come. Jesus will make a clear statement later in our text that will place Him on the same plane as God. Here, by appealing to David himself, He is making at the very least a veiled claim to be the long awaited heir to the throne of the very man whose actions He is citing. The incident to which Christ appeals took place as David was fleeing from king Saul. It takes place in 1 Samuel 21:1-6.
1 Samuel 21:1–6 CSB
David went to the priest Ahimelech at Nob. Ahimelech was afraid to meet David, so he said to him, “Why are you alone and no one is with you?” David answered the priest Ahimelech, “The king gave me a mission, but he told me, ‘Don’t let anyone know anything about the mission I’m sending you on or what I have ordered you to do.’ I have stationed my young men at a certain place. Now what do you have on hand? Give me five loaves of bread or whatever can be found.” The priest told him, “There is no ordinary bread on hand. However, there is consecrated bread, but the young men may eat it only if they have kept themselves from women.” David answered him, “I swear that women are being kept from us, as always when I go out to battle. The young men’s bodies are consecrated even on an ordinary mission, so of course their bodies are consecrated today.” So the priest gave him the consecrated bread, for there was no bread there except the Bread of the Presence that had been removed from the presence of the Lord. When the bread was removed, it had been replaced with warm bread.
To place this story in time for a frame of reference, Saul had just thrown a series of banquets because of the new moon festival and David had been absent from each of them. He and Jonathan had devised a plan to discern Saul’s plans towards David. When Saul grew angry, Jonathan knew that his father wanted to kill David and so had gone into the field and warned David. David flees and as he flees he comes to Nob where the tabernacle was housed at that time. He comes into the priest and tells him that he is on a secret mission and then he asks for something to eat. The only thing that was available was the bread of the presence. This was a special set of 12 loaves that were baked every Sabbath and placed on the gold table in the Holy Place. The bread was then made available to the priests alone to eat in accordance with Leviticus 24:9
Leviticus 24:8–9 CSB
The bread is to be set out before the Lord every Sabbath day as a permanent covenant obligation on the part of the Israelites. It belongs to Aaron and his sons, who are to eat it in a holy place, for it is the holiest portion for him from the fire offerings to the Lord; this is a permanent rule.”
Yet Ahimelech takes the bread, the only bread he had available, and gives it to David to eat. The abiding precedent contained here is that the priest violated the clear commands of Scripture out of compassion to meet the urgent needs of a human being. Christ is making a brilliant argument - if a human agent of God could supersede the commands of Scripture out of compassion for another human, surely the Son of God could supersede the extrabiblical commands of the Pharisees to allow His hungry disciples to get some sustenance.
Now careful observers of the text might note an issue - in our text Christ says in the days of Abiathar and the text of 1 Samuel 21 says the priest’s name was Ahimelech. The commentaries are rather vague on the reasoning for this. Ahimelech was actually Abiathar’s father and so there could have been a scribal omission at some point that changed our text to say in the days of Abiathar because he was better known. He was certainly alive when this event between his father and David took place. The rest of the story is that Saul finds out that Ahimelech helped David and he puts all of Ahimelech’s family to death with only Abiathar surviving. Where God, who had the divine right to punish, chose not to exact His justice, Saul, who was not wronged at all, chose to act of his own volition. Not even because of the contravening of Scripture’s standards but simply because this priest had fed a hungry man that Saul perceived as an enemy.
Luke and Matthew in writing their Gospels chose to leave out the detail regarding the priest. Why is there this variance? The truth is no one has a good answer for that. Different translations render these verses differently. The other truth is that the name of the priest is incidental to the story and the weight of Jesus argument rests on the person of David and what was done for him not on who was priest in the tabernacle at Nob. And in so doing He gets to the heart of the issue and establishes the principle.

The Principle

Mark 2:27-18
In truth Jesus establishes two principles here and He builds from the lesser to the greater. He starts off by appealing to Genesis 2 to establish that the Sabbath predates even the admonitions in the Ten Commandments to observe the Sabbath and keep it holy.
Genesis 2:2–3 CSB
On the seventh day God had completed his work that he had done, and he rested on the seventh day from all his work that he had done. God blessed the seventh day and declared it holy, for on it he rested from all his work of creation.
Then the principle is clarified and codified for us in Exodus
Exodus 20:8–11 CSB
Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy: You are to labor six days and do all your work, but the seventh day is a Sabbath to the Lord your God. You must not do any work—you, your son or daughter, your male or female servant, your livestock, or the resident alien who is within your city gates. For the Lord made the heavens and the earth, the sea, and everything in them in six days; then he rested on the seventh day. Therefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and declared it holy.
The problem was that the Pharisees had taken the Sabbath rest promised by God - a rest that is meant to be a picture of the rest we can have in Christ through salvation - and made it a burdensome task that the people couldn’t keep. They had even developed loopholes to get around the restrictions such as connecting two homes by a piece of string and thereby artificially extending their dwellings and thereby extending the distance they could travel. Yet they had missed the heart of the command and the very point. They had made man a slave of the Sabbath rather than the Sabbath being a rest opportunity for man.
In Matthew’s account Jesus quotes from Hosea 6:6 saying
Hosea 6:6 CSB
For I desire faithful love and not sacrifice, the knowledge of God rather than burnt offerings.
The Sabbath day was meant to be a time to remember God not a day of working not to work. The Pharisees had changed the tenor of the day from one of remembering God’s goodness to one of striving to keep oneself righteous. In so doing they had made it impossible for anyone to show compassion, love or generosity towards their neighbor - the true heart of the law that God had given them.
Jesus claims divine right as He establishes the next principle - He lays claim to the Sabbath and calls it His own. Referring to Himself as the Son of Man He says that He is Lord even of the Sabbath. This is the Greek word κυριοσ and it means lord and master. It was also a title applied to God in the Old Testament. Jesus is making the claim here that He is the instituter of the Sabbath and therefore it is He, not the usurping Pharisees, who has the true right to say what is and is not allowed on the Sabbath.
This sequence of rapidly escalating conflicts between Jesus and the religious leaders is bookended by two claims made by Jesus to prerogatives that could only belong to God or to One equal with God - the forgiveness of sins and Lordship over the Sabbath day. These conflicts will continue to escalate and place Jesus more at odds with the current religious system of the day until they have no choice or option for satisfaction but to have Him killed.

Conclusion

But what does this mean for us in the church age? We no longer practice the Sabbath - at least not the way the first century Jewish religion did. We don’t even gather on the “Sabbath” day - if we do we’re all here a day late.
But the truth is - sometimes, as I referred to in our introduction, we in a well meaning manner can do the exact same thing the Pharisees did. We can fence God off so much from those He is calling to Himself that we make it impossible for them ever to get to Him.
There is an extended passage in Hebrews 3 and 4 about this subject and how it applies in the church age. Time precludes me from delving into all of what it says but these verses are particularly relevant
Hebrews 4:8–13 CSB
For if Joshua had given them rest, God would not have spoken later about another day. Therefore, a Sabbath rest remains for God’s people. For the person who has entered his rest has rested from his own works, just as God did from his. Let us then make every effort to enter that rest, so that no one will fall into the same pattern of disobedience. For the word of God is living and effective and sharper than any double-edged sword, penetrating as far as the separation of soul and spirit, joints and marrow. It is able to judge the thoughts and intentions of the heart. No creature is hidden from him, but all things are naked and exposed to the eyes of him to whom we must give an account.
Jesus said in Matthew 11
Matthew 11:28 CSB
“Come to me, all of you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest.
If you’re here this morning and you think you don’t measure up, if you’ve been striving to keep the Sabbath or other self or man made restrictions before coming to Jesus know that we remove all obstacles to your entering into the promised Sabbath rest of His salvation. Put down the heavy burdens that some may try and impose on you and come to know Him this morning. We have men in the back of the room who are ready and willing to talk to you about entering into His rest.
For those of you here who have already entered into that rest we have an opportunity this season to open the Word of God and to tell people about the rest that He has promised. The Thanksgiving and Christmas season is perfect for sharing the Gospel because people are already talking about it. But we must also take care not to mirror the Pharisees and place unnecessary obstacles in people’s way. As we come to the table this morning for Communion it is an opportunity for us to rest, to rest in what Christ has done for us, to rest in His sacrifice on our behalf, to rest in the payment that He made for our sins on the cross. It is also an opportunity for us to confess and relinquish any false requirements or traditions we may be holding on to that are preventing people from reaching Him. And finally it is an opportunity to look forward through His shed blood and broken body to the rest that He purchased for us on the cross and that we are all promised. While in this life we are promised nothing but tribulation and trial, in the next we know that we will have rest.
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