The Sabbath Mistreated and Misunderstood

The Gospel of Matthew • Sermon • Submitted 3 years ago

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The Pharisees tried to condemn Jesus and His Disciples, but their misunderstanding of the Sabbath was a symptom of a greater problem.

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Psalm 107:23–32 ESV

23 Some went down to the sea in ships, doing business on the great waters; 24 they saw the deeds of the Lord, his wondrous works in the deep. 25 For he commanded and raised the stormy wind, which lifted up the waves of the sea. 26 They mounted up to heaven; they went down to the depths; their courage melted away in their evil plight; 27 they reeled and staggered like drunken men and were at their wits’ end. 28 Then they cried to the Lord in their trouble, and he delivered them from their distress. 29 He made the storm be still, and the waves of the sea were hushed. 30 Then they were glad that the waters were quiet, and he brought them to their desired haven. 31 Let them thank the Lord for his steadfast love, for his wondrous works to the children of man! 32 Let them extol him in the congregation of the people, and praise him in the assembly of the elders.

Introduction

Open up in your Bibles to Matthew chapter 12. We will be going through verses 1-8 today.

Chapter 12 marks a bit of a shift in Matthew’s writing style. He moves from a more chronological approach to a “thematic” approach. In chapter 12 we’re going to see many of the charges that the Pharisees bring against Jesus and what He says to defend Himself. The reality is that a lot of the truth that Jesus declares here is going to be used against Him for His crucifixion, yet His boldness to declare the truth is admirable and necessary. We must stand against false understandings of God and His ways, like Jesus is going to do today.

This morning we will encounter the Pharisees giving Jesus and His Disciples a charge. They will be sure of their theology, convinced in their tradition and practice. They will grab what they perceive to be Jesus’ sin, throw it in His face, and be unwilling to accept that they were actually in the wrong.

So, let’s read.

Matthew 12:1–8 ESV

1 At that time Jesus went through the grainfields on the Sabbath. His disciples were hungry, and they began to pluck heads of grain and to eat. 2 But when the Pharisees saw it, they said to him, “Look, your disciples are doing what is not lawful to do on the Sabbath.” 3 He said to them, “Have you not read what David did when he was hungry, and those who were with him: 4 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 priests? 5 Or have you not read in the Law how on the Sabbath the priests in the temple profane the Sabbath and are guiltless? 6 I tell you, something greater than the temple is here. 7 And if you had known what this means, ‘I desire mercy, and not sacrifice,’ you would not have condemned the guiltless. 8 For the Son of Man is lord of the Sabbath.”

I. What is the Sabbath?

Before we dive too deep into what just occurred, I want us to define the term “Sabbath.” In brief, what it is and why it was practiced.

In the beginning, going all the way back to Genesis 1, we find God at the end of His Creation work. He has made light, space, land, vegetation, stars, moons, fish, birds, animals, and then finally man, His apex creation. God then blesses all of His creative work, He tells them to multiply and fill the earth, He gives creatures the blessing to eat of all that they can and joyously declares it all “good.”

Enter Genesis 2, where just before we get an insight into how God created man, He looks at all He has created and tells them all that they need a day of rest. This was the institution of the Sabbath, which is a word that can be translated “cease,” or “rest,” or more formally “complete rest.”

Sabbath is a word that describes the days where you feel refreshed, where you have been able to do more than just work. Where you wake up the next day knowing that the previous one was washed of toil and strife.

Then, if we were to turn to Exodus 20, we’d find where God reaffirms this, but in covenant with His people Israel. God tells the Israelites this:

Exodus 20:8–11 ESV

8 “Remember the Sabbath day, to keep 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, you, or your son, or your daughter, your male servant, or your female servant, or your livestock, or the sojourner who is within your gates. 11 For in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them, and rested on the seventh day. Therefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy.

Now, as you hear in these verses, God is very explicit on His commands. You shall keep this day “holy,” on the six previous days you “shall labor” and “do all your work,” but the seventh day is a Sabbath to the Lord your God.

It’s a rest, a ceasing, that is “set apart” to God Himself. “On it you shall not do any work.”

The point of the Sabbath was that God had rested, not that He “needed” to, not that He felt drained the way we do after a hard week, but He blessed it by enacting it. What God does is holy and right, and God rested to prove that rest is holy and right.

If you hear nothing else I said, hear me saying in this culture of endless toil and struggle that God has blessed rest. Blessed it so indeed as instituting it as a Law that we take rest.

If you are the type of person who works constantly, you are in sin. Take up the requirement of the Sabbath as you would any other commandment. Know what it means and practice it. As you would abstain from murder (the 6th commandment) or as you would avoid using God’s name in vain (the 3rd commandment), so practice the 4th commandment and practice the Sabbath.

Now, coming back to Matthew 12, it’s by this time that the Pharisees have corrupted the Sabbath. Ironically, as we explored in Matthew 5 and 6, the Pharisees hadn’t taken seriously any of the other commandments. They had under-practiced adultery, murder, theft, offerings, and even corrupted prayers by their selfish purposes.

Then, when we come to Sabbath-observance, they had flipped to the other side and over-practiced it. For instance, in their teachings they had recorded 39 primary kinds of labor that were not allowed on the Sabbath, and 11 of these involved various kinds of preparation for cooking. With that in mind, they had to produce rules of what to do the day before the Sabbath, and even now an orthodox Jew isn’t even supposed to turn on a microwave on the Sabbath.

Why, you ask? Because it is a form of cooking and therefore must be work.... The absolute laziest way to make food is illegal on the Sabbath...

II. The Problem

The charge given against Jesus was one of those forms of preparation. In 12:1 we read that Jesus was passing through the grainfields on the Sabbath. His disciples were hungry, so they were grabbing heads of grain and munching on them. They weren’t gathering the heads of grain for selling, so they weren’t laboring or working on the Sabbath… They were simply feeding themselves.

But the Pharisees were trying to find fault in Jesus and His ministry. They were angry at Him for allowing their laws to be violated. Not, by the way, and Levitical Law… No Law of the Bible, but what they had gathered in their traditions and teachings. Jesus and His Disciples were transgressing against Pharisaical Law, but not God’s intention in His Word.

The real problem here is that “tradition” was being transgressed. Even in the church, certain arguments arise that are more tradition than Scripture. For instance: What makes a church? Pews or chairs? What color carpet is permitted in a church? Can a church meet in a warehouse, a home, or a movie theater and still be considered a “church?” The answer to all of those is that all are permitted.

Just like grabbing prepared food out of a fridge is not violating the Sabbath, a church’s meeting space is not violating biblical mandates.

The Pharisees had distorted the goodness of the Sabbath and turned it into something hideous, ugly, and unrecognizable to God’s intentions. That’s why Jesus responds to the Pharisees the way He did.

The charge that the Pharisees gave against Jesus is found in v. 2: “Look, your disciples are doing what is not lawful to do on the Sabbath!” What a declaration.

“HA!” they are thinking, “We’ve caught this false teacher! [[wringing hands]] “We’ll show the people how wrong this miracle-worker is. We’ll show them that He’s not as good as us, smart as us, WORTHY as us!”

III. Jesus’ Illustrations

But then Jesus responds. He gives two illustrations, followed by 3 reasons (in our text) they are wrong. In Mark 2 we find another reason that I’ll mention in a bit, but let’s look at Jesus’ illustrations.

David in the house of God

This is found in 1 Samuel 21. David was fleeing the then-king Saul, he came to the land of “Nob.” He met a priest named Ahimelech and asked him for food. Ahimelech didn’t have enough “common” bread to share, but had bread prepared as an offering to God.

Ahimelech ended up showing mercy to David and the men with him, giving him the bread he had on the condition that those men were kept “holy” from women before eating it. In Leviticus 25:4-7, we read how that bread was to be prepared. It was prepared and eaten by the Levites on the Sabbath...

Jesus is saying that what David did was not sinful, nor had Ahimelech sinned by allowing David to eat it. That showing mercy to someone on the Sabbath, even giving of an offering to God as an act of mercy to a person made in God’s image is not sin.

Friends, an application of this would be that if you had your tithe check prepared, but then you heard of someone in dire circumstances who needed a portion of your offering… It would not be sin to use that to the glory of God in another place than the offering box. It would be sin to use an offering to provide for a vacation, but not to provide mercy to someone in need.

Priests profaning the Sabbath

The second illustration Jesus gives is similar to the first.

Remember, the Bread of the Presence, the bread that David and his compatriots consumed was prepared on the Sabbath by the priests.

Not only that, but if it’s not lawful to do work on the Sabbath, then what about the priests in the temple who perform all the butchery necessary for sacrifices? Are the priests not sinning by “profaning” the Sabbath?

No, they are “guiltless.” It’s much like how the Christian Sabbath is typically celebrated on Sunday (mirroring the day that Jesus rose from the grave). But here I was this morning, bright and early, cleaning things and getting things in order. I’m delivering a sermon right now, which is quite literally a portion of my “job.” But I am not sinning in doing so, nor would you be sinning to help greet, to gather children, to teach a Sunday School class, etc.

A Baptist principle is the “priesthood of all believers.” Every person professing to know Christ is therefore a priest, of sorts, and is permitted to help on a Sabbath day in whatever allows God to be worshipped.

We do have to balance this, though, while keeping the 4th commandment. Old Testament priests had other days of rest and private worship to accommodate their duties. We must do the same, like how my day of rest is usually Mondays.

IV. Jesus’ Defenses

In verses 6-8 we find Jesus’ three explanations of why the Pharisees are mistreating and misunderstanding the Sabbath.

The first is that “something greater than the temple is here” (v. 6). What Jesus means by this statement is fleshed out more specifically in the book of Hebrews. Jesus is called the “great High Priest” who ushers in true rest for His people. As in Hebrews 4:9-11: “So then, there remains a Sabbath rest for the people of God, for whoever has entered God’s rest has also rested from his works as God did from his. Let us therefore strive to enter that rest, so that no one may fall by the same sort of disobedience.”

This is only achieved in Christ and through Christ, not through the constant works of sacrifices done in the temple. This is how Jesus can specifically say that “something greater than the temple is here,” because He is providing true rest, true Sabbath by His coming and reconciling work of dying on the cross.

The second defense is that the Pharisees should’ve understood this statement by God: “I desire mercy, and not sacrifice.” This will be our specific topic next week, but it’s a quote from Hosea 6:6, where Israel and Judah have not repented from their sins. They are hard-hearted, serving other gods, plundering the poor to feed the rich, and God is mad at them. So mad that He says that their sacrifices are hideous to Him. So God says: “... I desire steadfast love and not sacrifice, the knowledge of God rather than burnt offerings.”

God prefers steadfast love, He prefers mercy, over dutiful, dry, empty obedience of rules. If you do the “right thing,” but your heart is far from God as you do it, do not consider it an offering or praise to the Lord.

The third defense is the most astounding, and probably infuriated the Pharisees more than anything else. Potentially because they didn’t understand Him, but Jesus makes a declaration of His divine status. He says: “For the Son of Man is lord of the Sabbath.”

This is a statement that only Jesus could make, declaring Himself Lord of true rest. What the disciples did was not sin because Jesus knew the actual intent of the Sabbath, He was even Lord of it. As Mark records in Mark 2:27: “The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath.”

The Sabbath was given for the benefit of man, and Christ is Lord of it. His disciples didn’t sin against God by walking through grainfields and eating heads of grain, but the Pharisees in their own misunderstanding of Sabbath had sinned against God by twisting and distorting God’s Word.

Conclusion and Application

God cares about proper understanding of His Word. Misunderstanding His Word leads to poor application, but mistreating it is a grievous sin. If confronted with a biblical correction, we need to be quick to repent lest we do what the Pharisees did here of claiming that Jesus and His Disciples were sinning.

If they understood properly, they would “not have condemned the guiltless” (12:7). Thus it is our duty as Christians to properly understand God and His Word, to constantly have our thoughts conformed to what He has said.

Like I said in the beginning, the Pharisees under-applied all of the commandments, yet over-applied the 4th. We should not be this way. We shouldn’t “minor in the majors and major in the minors.” Christians ought to be people who painstakingly put our trust in God’s Word, because doing so puts our trust in God.

That’s the main point of our text today. Jesus and His Disciples were “guiltless,” yet they were charged as if they were guilty of profaning God’s holy day of rest. All because they were doing what would feed them for their day of worshipping the Lord. If the Pharisees had understood the purpose of the Sabbath, employed proper understanding of the entirety of God’s Word beyond a few sentences in Exodus 20 and Deuteronomy 5, they would not have thought Jesus was sinning.

If they understood the whole of God’s Word, they would’ve known who Jesus was and why He was so worthy of worship. Be whole-Bible Christians, lest you try and condemn the guiltless.

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