The Lord of the Sabbath, Pt. 1

Click HERE to access this program’s Study Guide

Like them or hate them, rules exist for a reason and every family has them. But when we forget the reason for the rules, the rules themselves can start running the family! Pastor Nick Gatzke turns to a biblical confrontation over rules, when Jesus was challenged for breaking the Sabbath.

I want to ask you to open your Bible with me to Mark chapter 2. And as you do, there is a program on public radio called This American Life. And some time ago, they ran a special report on a certain subculture of people whose prized possessions are their car stereos. They are called the decibel drag racers. And people flock across international lines even to join into the competition of the decibel drag racers. Like actual drag racing, they line the cars up across a track, except in this competition, they will not be going anywhere. The winner is the owner of the car stereo that can play the loudest possible decibel. Oddly enough, most of the cars that win this competition aren’t even drivable. The world record holder at the time of the interview had 900 pounds of concrete in the floor of his van.

Windshields usually crack after only two or three competitions. And yet one competitor seems entirely to miss the irony that there’s no longer any room in the car for himself. We need more batteries, he laments. But that’s all the room that we have. To anyone on the outside of this extreme audio sport, the word irony is perhaps a generous word to describe the phenomenon. This American Life reporter was far more articulate when they said, everybody wants to be the king of the hill, he concluded. But the number of aspiring kings… dwarfs the number of available hills. So in this country, we build more hills. I’m not sure there’s a better way to describe it than that. Everyone wants to be the king, especially when it comes to life, to make your own rules, to be self-determining, to pursue whatever, whoever, whenever you want.

Mark 2, we see that Jesus has arrived and announced the greatest of all kingdoms was at hand. It wasn’t the kingdom of the decibel drag racers. Jesus announces the arrival of the kingdom of God. And through his words and through his actions, he is displaying that he himself is the king. And the opposition is rising. And our text today ends with a description of just how severe the opposition actually becomes when it says they held counsel on how to destroy him.

Follow with me as we start in Mark 2:23. This is what it says. It says, “Jesus was going through the grain fields, and as they made their way, his disciples began to pluck heads of grain. And the Pharisees were saying to him, look, why are they doing what is not lawful on the Sabbath? And he said to them, have you never read what David did when he was in need and was hungry, he and those who were with him? Now he entered the house of God in the time of Abiathar, the high priest, and ate the bread of presence, which it is not lawful for anyone but the priest to eat, and also gave it to those who were with him. And he said to them, the Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath. So the Son of Man is Lord even of the Sabbath. Again, he entered the synagogue and a man was there with a withered hand. And they watched Jesus to see whether he would heal him on the Sabbath so that they might accuse him. And he said to the man with the withered hand, come here. And he said to them, is it lawful on the Sabbath to do good or do harm, to save life or to kill? But they were silent. And he looked around at them with anger, grieved at their hardness of heart. And he said to the man, stretch out your hand. He stretched it out and his hand was restored. The Pharisees went out and immediately held counsel with the Herodians against him. How? To destroy him.”

Jesus’ ministry had begun and the cornerstone for his death was already being laid. The announcement of the arrival of the kingdom of God, and his associating activity displayed that he is indeed the king. And this comes in very sharp contrast to the Pharisees and to the religious leaders of the day. And the first account that we read this morning seems to be fairly innocuous as Jesus and his disciples walk through the field on the Sabbath. But in our contemporary Western mindset, it’s easy for us to dismiss the significance of the Sabbath.

And so consider it with me for a moment. The institution of the Sabbath and the practice of the Sabbath, which was a day set apart by God as a day of rest for the Jewish people from sunset on Friday through sunset on Saturday, was one of the two observances above everything else that set these people apart from the rest of the world. The other one, of course, being circumcision. This was one of the things that made the Jews Jewish. It was at the heart of their spiritual practice and identity.

And we see it in Exodus 20 and Deuteronomy 5, God lists the fourth commandment, which is the longest of the 10 commandments. And it reads this, it says, “Remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy. Six days you shall labor and do all your work, but on 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 was within your gates. 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.”

So for the Jews, Sabbath rest consisted of ceasing from every kind of work because God rested on the seventh day himself. And he modeled this in creation and it points to a divine ordering of things. By the time of the Pharisees, the definition of what constituted work had expanded significantly, and become very…. It was prohibited to plow and to hunt and to butcher and to farm like you might expect, but it was even prohibited to help one of your animals give birth or to loosen a knot or to sew and mend clothing and even to write more than one letter with a pen. This was considered by the Jews to be an eternal blessing from God, and a sign of their identity as Jewish people.

And so in Mark 2:23, when Jesus and his disciples walk through the field on the Sabbath day, based on the categories of understanding what work is according to the Pharisees of this time, they break two Sabbath laws. They pluck the heads of grain and… They travel more than the allotted number of steps or allowed number of steps.

And so the question comes in verse 24, and the Pharisees were saying to him, look, why are they doing what is not lawful on the Sabbath? Which is another way of saying, why are the Jews not acting like Jews? Which is another way of saying, why are these supposed followers of Yahweh not following him in the most basic part of our spiritual identity? And Jesus responds, have you ever read what David did when he was in need and was hungry with those who were with him? Back when he entered the house of God in the time of the high priest of Beathar and ate the bread of presence, which was not lawful for any but the priests to eat. And he gave it to those who were with him.

There you need to take a step back. Jesus refers to King David all the way back over a thousand years ago in 1 Samuel 21. And just to give you a little context, David is on the run for his life from King Saul. And his needs were practical and his needs were great. He had no food. He had no way to defend himself. The story begins with David approaching the tabernacle at Nob. He’s on the run for his life. He has nothing. He has no one except for the Lord himself. It’s not a mistake that he has in his time of need to the tabernacle. He has no one except for God.

I wonder if you ever feel like that. Like you have tremendous need. Need that’s pressing. Need that has no obvious way that it’s going to be met. I’m not talking about wants. I’m not talking about desires for greater comfort or temptation toward luxury. I’m talking about raw, painful need. Maybe it’s physical need. Maybe it’s emotional need. Maybe it’s a spiritual need. And you have no one that can meet those needs in your life except for the Lord.

David gets to the tabernacle and he asks the priest for five loaves of bread or whatever he has on hand. The need is great. And there’s a problem. The only food that the priests have on hand is holy bread, sometimes referred to as the show bread or the bread of presence. And this is bread that is baked into 12 loaves and it’s arranged into two piles of six representing the tribes of Israel on display on the table next to a bottle of frankincense as a visual reminder for everybody who enters, and as a weekly food offering to God himself. Because it was an offering to God, it was reserved for the priests and only the priests to eat it at the end of the week. And so you see the dilemma. The bread is available for the one who has need, but according to the law, he isn’t allowed to eat it. And the priest, gave him the bread anyway because the need was great and because David asked him to. So let’s fast forward to Jesus. The disciples had need for food. This need was in contradiction to Old Testament law because it was the Sabbath. And here’s the tension, which is more important, true need or legal purity. And what does the answer to that question indicate about the nature of spiritual identity? And so Jesus’ response was to point the Pharisees to the incident with David and the showbread, not just as an example, but actually as precedence.

David’s action points to the principle that Jesus is getting to here. You see, for David, he was God’s chosen forerunner. The law was meant to serve his need, not to exacerbate that need. In the greatest of needs, David went to the Lord by going to the tabernacle. He did what he was supposed to do when you have the very greatest of needs. He relied on the one who can truly meet the need, the one who can give it. He showed his faith in the midst of trouble by clinging to God himself. The law was meant to serve the coming kingdom, not to hinder it.

Likewise, the law was meant to serve the true needs of the disciples, not to exacerbate those needs. They didn’t save up for food on the Sabbath, according to Jewish custom. Why? Because they were with Jesus, doing all the Jesus things. They were with the king. And so their devotion to him created a different need, the need for food. What were they supposed to do? They relied on the one who could give. They showed their faith to God by clinging to God himself, who was right there among them, the savior, Jesus. The law was meant to serve the coming kingdom, not…a thousand years after David eating the showbread, Jesus claims to be the one just like David, even one greater than David. And so he says to them, the Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath. So the Son of Man is Lord even of the Sabbath. Just like the previous account that we talked about last week with fasting, Jesus again indicates that the law and specifically the Sabbath, was not given to produce a solemn, joyless religion. And that’s basically what the Pharisees had made it to become.

The law was given to help people see God more clearly, to highlight the contrast between their sin and God’s holiness, and it was not given to produce a people who were enslaved. It was produced to people who would grow in holiness and faithfulness. And now Jesus puts himself squarely right in the middle of it all in the place of God himself. And he does so by saying, I am the son of man. And he does so by saying, I’m the Lord of the Sabbath.

If you are observing the Sabbath as a Jewish person, observing the Sabbath as part of what made the Jews Jewish, it was the core of their identity. And Jesus comes along and he says that, then everything you thought about your spiritual identity is now challenged. The thing abiding by the law that you thought put you in favor with God is now questioned because Jesus is here and God is with us. He is the Lord of the Sabbath, the Lord over the law, and the Lord over all of the people. And so what is it for you,

I wonder? What piece of your spiritual identity are you tempted to believe puts you… in the greatest favor with God. I think we all have some temptation toward this end to have secondary or tertiary issues of identity that we elevate to the primary. What is it for you? Think about that. For some of us, it might be the notion that we’re conservative. I’m a conservative first and I hold fast to my convictions. Maybe that’s a theological conservative, maybe it’s a political conservative, but it’s a core piece of your identity that you think brings you closer to God. For some of you, it might be considering yourself to be a loving and accepting person. I’m described in a lot of ways, but the thing that describes me the best is a loving and accepting person, and I know that’s what brings me closer to God. For others, it might be your denominational identity. I’m a Baptist, or I’m an evangelical, or I’m a Presbyterian, or whatever that identifier might be. Maybe for some, it’s your donations to help the poor, or maybe it’s your volunteer work, or maybe it’s something else. The list can go on. And hear me, all of those are fine things. They’re good things. All of them can even be godly things, but they aren’t the core of your religious identity. Why? Because the king has come, and he is the Lord over all things.

###

** This transcript was generated using AI transcription technology and reviewed for accuracy, but may contain errors. Please refer to the original audio for precise wording.