SPEAKER_00: This sermon was recorded at Faith Evangelical Free Church in Grand Forks, North Dakota.
SPEAKER_01: We've spent a good deal of time working our way through Matthew chapter 11.
SPEAKER_01: If you stuck with me most of the way, you ought to be fairly familiar with the content of that chapter by now.
SPEAKER_01: But I'd like to spend just a few moments briefly to review.
SPEAKER_01: It's important to have that chapter in mind as we continue on in the Gospel record.
SPEAKER_01: Matthew chapter 11 begins comparing and contrasting, really, the Lord Jesus Christ and John the Baptist.
SPEAKER_01: Jesus is ministering to people, he's healing diseases, he's teaching, he's instructing, he's demonstrating his deity, while John the Baptist, preparing the way for him, has found himself in prison about to give his life for preparing the way for Christ.
SPEAKER_01: And Jesus then confirms that yes, indeed, John is the one whom God sent to prepare the way.
SPEAKER_01: And you would think then that the popular response, the common response, the expected response to this prophetic fulfillment of everything that God had planned, that he had spent decades and centuries and even millennia paving the way for would be received with great joy and enthusiasm.
SPEAKER_01: But Jesus says that's not the case.
SPEAKER_01: He painted it in a picture, he said, you know, we, John and Jesus, played the flute for you, but nobody danced.
SPEAKER_01: We sang a dirge, but nobody mourned.
SPEAKER_01: So all of this preparation, all of this laying the groundwork and paving the road for the Lord Jesus Christ ended with him being rejected.
SPEAKER_01: And Jesus then described three different communities who received the most of his attention.
SPEAKER_01: They had the most of his teaching, the most of his miracles, and their reaction to him was compared to three Old Testament pagan communities, Sodom and Gomorrah, Tyre and Sidon, who rejected anything about God.
SPEAKER_01: But then Jesus said that God is sovereign over all of that.
SPEAKER_01: He does what is pleasing to him.
SPEAKER_01: And so, in the grand scheme of things, those who think that they are wise in this world don't end up seeing the good news of salvation in Christ.
SPEAKER_01: The Apostle Paul talks about that as there being a veil over their faces that they can't really see clearly through.
SPEAKER_01: But those to whom God has chosen have that veil lifted to clearly see and believe.
SPEAKER_01: And then we saw that that authority was given to Jesus, that authority to reveal God the Father was handed over to the Son of God.
SPEAKER_01: And so Jesus came to reveal God to us.
SPEAKER_01: And so he commanded us then to respond to his lordship.
SPEAKER_01: And we looked at that last Sunday on Resurrection Sunday, where Jesus said to us to come to him, to take his yoke upon us and to learn from him, to be his disciples, to follow him, to receive his authority and power and might by rejecting our personal lordship and coming to him, being his disciples, learning from him because he has a light burden.
SPEAKER_01: Now, what would you expect to come after all of that?
SPEAKER_01: We might expect to hear an account of discipleship.
SPEAKER_01: There are three commands come to me, take my yoke upon me, and be my disciple.
SPEAKER_01: So it would make sense that the next event is somewhat related to discipleship, of following Jesus, a life of being committed to him.
SPEAKER_01: Maybe we would expect an account of people rejecting him.
SPEAKER_01: After all of this, we see that there are communities of people that don't trust in him and that just reject him entirely, but yet still he extends that call to come to him.
SPEAKER_01: Maybe we would see some description of his authority because all things have been handed over to him.
SPEAKER_01: Or maybe, maybe just the most recent thing, we would expect something about him being gentle and lowly.
SPEAKER_01: What about all of those?
SPEAKER_01: All rolled together into seven sentences.
SPEAKER_01: What about all of that truth, all of that description of the Lord Jesus Christ, what he's done, who he is, all rolled together?
SPEAKER_01: Well, that's what we have next in the beginning of Matthew chapter 12.
SPEAKER_01: It's all rolled together.
SPEAKER_01: So if you like to read about Jesus being gentle and lowly, which you should, the book that we gave away a few weeks ago, if you like to study and to know Christ as gracious and forgiving rather than hearing of him being Lord and having an expectation of obedience.
SPEAKER_01: Or on the flip side, if you prefer to think of Jesus and to hear of Jesus being Lord rather than hearing about his love and his forbearance, being considerate and compassionate.
SPEAKER_01: If you would rather hear of the deity of Christ rather than his humanity or his condescension and compassion over his commanding supremacy over all things, if you land on one side or the other and you rather prefer to hear one thing rather than the other, then you better settle in.
SPEAKER_01: Because we get all of it.
SPEAKER_01: We get all of it right here.
SPEAKER_01: The text before us brings all of those attributes of the Lord Jesus together.
SPEAKER_01: We see him expressing supreme lordship coupled with compassion and gentleness, even with rebuke.
SPEAKER_01: And I trust that as we put all of it together, we're going to be led into a place of humble awe at what God in Christ has done for us.
SPEAKER_01: Let's look then at Matthew chapter 12, the first eight verses.
SPEAKER_01: As we'll see in a few moments, the section actually goes all the way through verse 14, but we're just going to deal with the first eight verses this morning.
SPEAKER_01: It says, At that time, Jesus went through the grain fields on the Sabbath day, and his disciples were hungry.
SPEAKER_01: They began to pluck heads of grain and to eat.
SPEAKER_01: But when the Pharisees saw it, they said, Hey, aren't you paying attention?
SPEAKER_01: Look what your disciples are doing.
SPEAKER_01: That's not lawful to do on the Sabbath.
SPEAKER_01: Jesus said to them, Haven't you read what David did when he was hungry and those who were with him?
SPEAKER_01: How he entered the house of God and ate the bread of the presence, which was not lawful for him to eat, nor for those who were with him, but only for the priests?
SPEAKER_01: Or have you not read in the law how on the Sabbath the priests in the temple profane the Sabbath and are guiltless?
SPEAKER_01: And I tell you, something greater than the temple is here.
SPEAKER_01: And if you had known what this means, I desire mercy and not sacrifice, you would not have condemned the guiltless.
SPEAKER_01: For the Son of Man is Lord of the Sabbath.
SPEAKER_01: Amen.
SPEAKER_01: Now before we get into what's happening here, we need to get a sense of where we are in the overall scope of Jesus' ministry.
SPEAKER_01: In our 2021 calendar, we are coming down from the mountaintop of Resurrection Sunday.
SPEAKER_01: But in the flow of Matthew's gospel, we are just now beginning to see the intense tension that exists between Jesus and the religious leaders of Israel.
SPEAKER_01: We have this issue here before us about the Sabbath day.
SPEAKER_01: And it's followed on the same day.
SPEAKER_01: Jesus goes from here talking to the Pharisees to the synagogue, and it's followed by an issue of him healing on the same day.
SPEAKER_01: So there's this interaction about the Sabbath day, followed by Jesus healing on the Sabbath day, and the reaction is recorded in verse 14.
SPEAKER_01: The Pharisees went out and conspired against him.
SPEAKER_01: How to destroy him.
SPEAKER_01: You can see that we're at a critical point in the ministry of Jesus.
SPEAKER_01: Now it's one thing to think, according to the Gospel of John, John chapter 1, verse 11, that Jesus came to his own people and they didn't receive him.
SPEAKER_01: That's a certain kind of rejection, right?
SPEAKER_01: But it's taken to another extreme level when those people are out to destroy you.
SPEAKER_01: That's a different kind of antagonism.
SPEAKER_01: And this one day, this one Sabbath day is identified by Matthew as a key moment in that shift from indifference or unbelief to outright hatred.
SPEAKER_01: And we have to ask why.
SPEAKER_01: What would move people from an indifferent, unbelieving kind of place to one of wanting to destroy someone else?
SPEAKER_01: What's the big deal about eating kernels of grain on the Sabbath day?
SPEAKER_01: And why in the next section would healing a man on the Sabbath day be a no-no?
SPEAKER_01: Well, there are two simple answers to that, and simple answers are rarely enough.
SPEAKER_01: First, there are some cultural traditions that existed in Judaism that we need to understand.
SPEAKER_01: And second, there's this growing animosity toward Jesus, specifically from those who were leading the religious life of Israel, who were in charge of those traditions.
SPEAKER_01: The world of the Bible is really the same world in which we live.
SPEAKER_01: You see, in this situation, there were some status quo's getting challenged.
SPEAKER_01: And there were reactions to that status quo being challenged.
SPEAKER_01: Patterns and tendencies change all the time.
SPEAKER_01: They change even within generations.
SPEAKER_01: So we should expect things between our time and the Bible times to look different, to feel different, to sound a little bit different, but people don't change that much.
SPEAKER_01: The internal realities of sin and salvation and what's right and what's wrong, those kinds of things don't shift that much.
SPEAKER_01: But the way things look, the way things appear, the way things feel, those might be expected to be different.
SPEAKER_01: For example, it was very normal for people to walk through grain fields on the way to church.
SPEAKER_01: Jesus is on his way to the synagogue on the Sabbath day.
SPEAKER_01: I don't expect that many of you drove right through the middle of wheat fields or potato patches or whatever.
SPEAKER_01: We don't do that today.
SPEAKER_01: That was very normal in Jesus' time.
SPEAKER_01: See, there weren't property lines that were distinguished by fences.
SPEAKER_01: There might be a pile of stones that marked the corner of a piece of property, and a pathway would transect a field right in the middle of it.
SPEAKER_01: So farmers and landowners would sow their seed right up to the edge of the pathway.
SPEAKER_01: It's like if you don't mow your lawn, if you don't take care of your lawn, and the grass grows knee high or waist high, it's very easy to walk on the sidewalk and pick that piece of grass with your hand without ever getting off of the sidewalk.
SPEAKER_01: That's kind of what we're dealing with here.
SPEAKER_01: Except it's in the middle of a field, and that was very normal.
SPEAKER_01: Nothing unusual about that kind of situation.
SPEAKER_01: And the disciples are hungry.
SPEAKER_01: Jesus didn't feed his kids before going to church on Sunday morning.
SPEAKER_01: So they're hungry.
SPEAKER_01: They're looking for a snack.
SPEAKER_01: That's a normal human experience.
SPEAKER_01: And so if there's if there's some grain growing alongside the sidewalk and they walk by it, they're just going to naturally pick it out.
SPEAKER_01: They're going to pick the head off the piece of grain, they're going to rub it between their hands to get the kernels out of the husk, and they're going to pop it in their mouth and eat it.
SPEAKER_01: So it happens.
SPEAKER_01: A little snack on the way to church.
SPEAKER_01: Only this wasn't your typical journey to church.
SPEAKER_01: It was on the Sabbath day.
SPEAKER_01: And that's the sole reason for this conflict with the Pharisees.
SPEAKER_01: See, it wasn't wrong for the disciples to pick the heads of grain while walking along the path on a normal day.
SPEAKER_01: That was expected.
SPEAKER_01: But according to the Pharisees, it was wrong because it was on the Sabbath day.
SPEAKER_01: And because it was on the Sabbath day, which God commanded us to keep holy, they said, it's breaking the law.
SPEAKER_01: It's illegal.
SPEAKER_01: And that is the key to understanding this passage and the one that follows about the healing.
SPEAKER_01: So if you look down to verse 12, you'll see Jesus sort of concluding this saying, so it is lawful to do good.
SPEAKER_01: And that passage is healing somebody, it's lawful to do a good thing on the Sabbath.
SPEAKER_01: That points then to the overall issue that's going on here.
SPEAKER_01: And it's not that hard to see and to discern.
SPEAKER_01: There's a question about the appropriateness of things to do on the Sabbath day.
SPEAKER_01: What's right, what's wrong, what's acceptable, what's not acceptable, what does God allow, what does God not allow on the Sabbath day?
SPEAKER_01: But there's a secondary issue that goes hand in hand with that, and it's much more convicting to us in our day than an issue of the Sabbath day.
SPEAKER_01: And that's this.
SPEAKER_01: If there is a right and a wrong, if there's a proper and improper element to things to do on the Sabbath day, who gets to decide what's right and wrong?
SPEAKER_01: Who gets to make that call?
SPEAKER_01: And what happens here is what often occurs today in our lives when similar situations arise.
SPEAKER_01: I don't think that my home is that much different than most of your homes.
SPEAKER_01: Every once in a while, Allison and I will say you don't get to decide that.
SPEAKER_01: Directed, of course, to people of smaller stature and much younger age.
SPEAKER_01: That's for mama or daddy to decide.
SPEAKER_01: Maybe it's something that that our kids can't really process through and and they're just too young for that.
SPEAKER_01: Maybe it's maybe it's something that we just need to decide and they don't have any input in it.
SPEAKER_01: Whatever the situation might be.
SPEAKER_01: Now in our home, as in yours, I'm sure, that that kind of comment can be a problem sometimes.
SPEAKER_01: There can be a reaction to that lack of involvement, that lack of interaction.
SPEAKER_01: Why is that?
SPEAKER_01: Why is it then that when we don't get to have a say in something, we react.
SPEAKER_01: Often negatively.
SPEAKER_01: Well it's very common.
SPEAKER_01: There's a sense of ownership over the issue.
SPEAKER_01: There's a sense of responsibility over the question at hand, over the problem, over the time that's being spent, or over their own participation, our own involvement in a situation.
SPEAKER_01: Call it entitlement or ownership or arrogance or just sinful self-centeredness.
SPEAKER_01: It comes down to the right, to the authority or to the responsibility to determine something.
SPEAKER_01: And when a decision goes against what we perceive to be the right direction or the proper decision, or what is appropriate, we get bit out of shape, don't we?
SPEAKER_01: When we when we have something go the opposite of what we think it ought to go, we we don't respond well.
SPEAKER_01: So often even we don't realize that we have expectations until they aren't met.
SPEAKER_01: We haven't processed through things, and then all of a sudden we get bent out of shape and we realize, you know what, I didn't realize I had that expectation.
SPEAKER_01: And then we react.
SPEAKER_01: And this is really hard in in the modern church.
SPEAKER_01: We tend to be possessive of our churches, like a like a child saying, This is my toy.
SPEAKER_01: It's this is my church, right?
SPEAKER_01: And we all have our own ideas about what church should or should not be, don't we?
SPEAKER_01: We all have our ideas of what Jeremy ought to be doing over there in the garage with our students.
SPEAKER_01: When we find one of those little yellow foam, styrofoam balls that they have from those Nerf gun fights, we all think, what is he doing?
SPEAKER_01: We all wonder about the music.
SPEAKER_01: We all wonder about how long are the prayers.
SPEAKER_01: You know, the preaching really shouldn't be that long.
SPEAKER_01: We all have our ideas, right?
SPEAKER_01: And those ideas are going to change from culture to culture.
SPEAKER_01: And so when when we come and our expectations aren't met, when our thoughts and and desires and our convictions and desires about what church ought to be aren't met, it feels like the people making the decisions are stepping out of bounds.
SPEAKER_01: And I'm starting to step where I shouldn't, aren't I?
SPEAKER_01: And then we we think sometimes, well, there my kids aren't aware of all of the things that go on in the decision-making process.
SPEAKER_01: In our businesses, in our in our families, in church, we don't have the full perspective.
SPEAKER_01: And that's what happened here.
SPEAKER_01: Jesus came along and started teaching in the Pharisees' territory.
SPEAKER_01: Now, nothing that he is and nothing that he does, and nothing that he teaches is wrong.
SPEAKER_01: It's the exact opposite, right?
SPEAKER_01: He's the perfection of all of those things.
SPEAKER_01: But it's not what the Pharisees expected.
SPEAKER_01: They reacted because Jesus and, by extension, his disciples were overstepping their bounds.
SPEAKER_01: They were doing something that the Pharisees thought ought not to be done.
SPEAKER_01: Even about something that feels as trivial as picking some heads of grain and snacking on them on the Sabbath day.
SPEAKER_01: Now, according to some stricter sects of Judaism, the disciples were committing two offenses, not just one.
SPEAKER_01: They were committing two offenses.
SPEAKER_01: In some circles, it was considered unlawful to pick the head off of the stock of grain.
SPEAKER_01: That was one sin.
SPEAKER_01: And the second sin was to actually rub it between your hands to get the kernels of grain out of the head.
SPEAKER_01: And both of those sins would then require a sacrifice of atonement.
SPEAKER_01: That's not the point these Pharisees make.
SPEAKER_01: To them, not honoring the Sabbath as a holy day was the massive deal.
SPEAKER_01: And in response, Jesus says to them, Yeah, guys, it's not your responsibility to decide whether picking and eating grain is appropriate on the Sabbath.
SPEAKER_01: Now it was right for them to honor the Sabbath.
SPEAKER_01: The Pharisees needed to follow the law of God, and that law of God, as I'm sure many of you could quote back to me from Exodus chapter 20, says, Remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy.
SPEAKER_01: Everybody knows this in Judaism.
SPEAKER_01: Six days you will labor, God said, because he labored for six days in creation, and on the seventh day he stopped.
SPEAKER_01: He rested.
SPEAKER_01: But Jesus is pointing this out because things started to get sticky on the definition of labor.
SPEAKER_01: What does it mean to work on the Sabbath day?
SPEAKER_01: What does it mean to expend effort and labor on the day that God said to rest?
SPEAKER_01: And where do we draw that line?
SPEAKER_01: Jesus informed these religious leaders that they had actually overstepped their bounds in deciding for themselves and for the whole people of Israel that picking grain and eating it on the Sabbath was, in fact, illegal work.
SPEAKER_01: You are wrong, Jesus.
SPEAKER_01: Jesus said to them, and you don't get to decide.
SPEAKER_01: Now we don't see the reaction to this until the end of the next episode.
SPEAKER_01: But they react like entitled toddl with no intent or desire to exhibit grace or relinquish control.
SPEAKER_01: But that's that's next time.
SPEAKER_01: Here, Jesus responds by keeping talking.
SPEAKER_01: He keeps on going like an attorney arguing his case.
SPEAKER_01: And he begins with a verbal slap in the face.
SPEAKER_01: Have you not read?
SPEAKER_01: Now, why is that a verbal slap in the face?
SPEAKER_01: Well, these are experts in reading.
SPEAKER_01: Of course they've read.
SPEAKER_01: He's referring to their Bibles.
SPEAKER_01: These are experts in their Bibles.
SPEAKER_01: They have spent their lives dedicated to understanding the Bible, frontwards and backwards, inside and out, upside and down.
SPEAKER_01: Of course they've read.
SPEAKER_01: But in examining the wood, they've for some reason missed the fact that there's a tree.
SPEAKER_01: And in examining the tree, they've missed that there's a whole forest here.
SPEAKER_01: They thought that they were providing direction for God's people.
SPEAKER_01: But Jesus says, No, you've actually missed out on what Scripture says.
SPEAKER_01: You haven't actually read sufficiently.
SPEAKER_01: See, this is interesting.
SPEAKER_01: Jesus is challenged, and what does he do?
SPEAKER_01: He goes back to Scripture.
SPEAKER_01: Even though Jesus is here in the flesh in this moment, he doesn't refer to his own authority that has been handed over to him by the Father.
SPEAKER_01: He says, What does the Bible say?
SPEAKER_01: And he says, in your setting up boundaries and in your setting up guides for the people, you've actually missed what the Bible says.
SPEAKER_01: You see, the Pharisees, by this point in time, had said that people could only walk so far on the Sabbath day.
SPEAKER_01: Generally about a half a mile.
SPEAKER_01: How many of you drove more than half a mile to church today?
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
SPEAKER_01: Sorry for you.
SPEAKER_01: You need a sacrifice.
SPEAKER_01: Now this is in a day when they didn't have cars to transport them.
SPEAKER_01: You had to walk to get to the synagogue.
SPEAKER_01: But they they limited it.
SPEAKER_01: And they limited how much you could carry because they determined that carrying over a certain amount was labor.
SPEAKER_01: And they had come to the conclusion that you could only carry the weight of a dried fig.
SPEAKER_01: Now, fig is eh, maybe about that big.
SPEAKER_01: You dry that, you shrink it, you take all the moisture out, and you're left with a dried piece of fruit.
SPEAKER_01: That's what you could carry on the Sabbath day without needing to sacrifice for sinning by carrying more.
SPEAKER_01: Oh, but there was grace involved, right?
SPEAKER_01: There was grace because if by chance what you carried was half of that weight, you got to carry it twice.
SPEAKER_01: Half plus a half equals one, right?
SPEAKER_01: And other sects of Judaism went even further.
SPEAKER_01: The other sects of Judaism said that you couldn't speak any secular words, whatever that means.
SPEAKER_01: You couldn't, you couldn't dust your home.
SPEAKER_01: You couldn't lift dust is the term.
SPEAKER_01: You couldn't lift the dust in your home.
SPEAKER_01: And if you did, you had to provide a sacrifice for that sin.
SPEAKER_01: You needed atonement for that sin.
SPEAKER_01: You see, just like in our world, the strictness varied from group to group, from sect to sect, from group of Pharisees to group of Sadducees to the Essenes, whatever.
SPEAKER_01: But regardless, this act of picking grain and rubbing the kernels to eat them was thought of as work that violated the law of the Sabbath day.
SPEAKER_01: The disciples, and thus Jesus being responsible for them, was not keeping the commandment to honor the Sabbath day as holy.
SPEAKER_01: And in response, Jesus challenged these experts in the law to remember a particular piece of Old Testament history.
SPEAKER_01: He says, All right, you claim that you know your Bibles.
SPEAKER_01: Let's think about David at a small place called Nob.
SPEAKER_01: Where's Nob?
SPEAKER_01: What's Nob about?
SPEAKER_01: Well, these guys would have known.
SPEAKER_01: They would have known that because of the involvement of the Philistines, the tabernacle had to be taken down from Shiloh and moved to a safer location.
SPEAKER_01: It was temporarily set up at this place called Nob.
SPEAKER_01: And this was during the time when David had been anointed as the new king of Israel by Samuel, but Saul was still living.
SPEAKER_01: Saul didn't want this up and comer around, so Saul was trying to get rid of David.
SPEAKER_01: David was on the run with some of his men.
SPEAKER_01: And one day while he was on the run with some of his men, they forgot to eat breakfast.
SPEAKER_01: Maybe they didn't eat breakfast, maybe they didn't have breakfast.
SPEAKER_01: They're hungry.
SPEAKER_01: They come upon the tabernacle temporarily set up at Nob, and David knows the bread of the presence is in there.
SPEAKER_01: Well, what's the bread of the presence?
SPEAKER_01: You can look for yourself in Leviticus 24.
SPEAKER_01: But basically there are twelve large loaves of bread that were to be made and set on a table every single week.
SPEAKER_01: When the week was done, that bread was replaced with fresh loaves, and the old loaves went to the priests as their food.
SPEAKER_01: That was a strict law.
SPEAKER_01: God said, this is what it's for, this is what you do, and it belongs only to those priests.
SPEAKER_01: It's their food.
SPEAKER_01: This is holy bread, it belongs only to those holy priests.
SPEAKER_01: And yet here's David coming along asking, Is there food here?
SPEAKER_01: Give it to me.
SPEAKER_01: And the priests give him the holy food.
SPEAKER_01: And Jesus mentions here, it was not lawful for him to eat.
SPEAKER_01: Nor was it lawful for those who were with him.
SPEAKER_01: And notice that Jesus says that twice.
SPEAKER_01: Those who were with him.
SPEAKER_01: David had friends and companions that were with him.
SPEAKER_01: It wasn't just David.
SPEAKER_01: That might be able to be explained away because he's the newly anointed king, and who's going to say no to the newly anointed king, right?
SPEAKER_01: But Jesus twice says those who were with him.
SPEAKER_01: Verse 4.
SPEAKER_01: And then again.
SPEAKER_01: Verse 2 and verse 4.
SPEAKER_01: David was allowed to eat the bread of the presence, which broke the law.
SPEAKER_01: Requirement set in place by God.
SPEAKER_01: Why?
SPEAKER_01: Well, probably in part because he was the anointed king.
SPEAKER_01: So David was not your common person coming to the tabernacle looking for some food.
SPEAKER_01: And Jesus, of course, in this situation is even greater than David.
SPEAKER_01: But the point that Jesus is making here is that David and those who were with him were hungry.
SPEAKER_01: There was a basic human need.
SPEAKER_01: That bread, that bread of the presence in the tabernacle was intended for a specific group of people.
SPEAKER_01: But if the newly anointed king needed it, he could have it.
SPEAKER_01: But even more, if the people were in need because of hunger, they could have it.
SPEAKER_01: So if Jesus is greater than David, and if Jesus' followers are hungry, why can they not eat on the Sabbath day?
SPEAKER_01: See, the Pharisees would never condemn David.
SPEAKER_01: Why then are they condemning his disciples?
SPEAKER_01: To look at it another way, the Pharisees don't get to decide what is right and wrong.
SPEAKER_01: Jesus declared that the Sabbath laws were not ever intended to restrict a person from doing what was needed for life.
SPEAKER_01: So satisfying hunger on the Sabbath is not sinful.
SPEAKER_01: Praise God.
SPEAKER_01: Hallelujah.
SPEAKER_01: How did Jesus do this?
SPEAKER_01: He appealed to Scripture.
SPEAKER_01: He didn't say, these are my rules.
SPEAKER_01: He said, No, what does God say?
SPEAKER_01: What does the Word of God say?
SPEAKER_01: And how does the Word of God fit this situation?
SPEAKER_01: These were people who knew the law inside and out, upside and down, but somehow they had neglected the fact that, oh, there's a situation where somebody got to eat bread that didn't belong to them and should never have been given to them.
SPEAKER_01: Why was God gracious to them?
SPEAKER_01: But there's more.
SPEAKER_01: Jesus gives a second argument in verse 5 that comes with biblical evidence.
SPEAKER_01: He starts talking about the temple and the priests and the priests sacrificing animals on a daily basis.
SPEAKER_01: The priests worked hard.
SPEAKER_01: They were essentially professional butchers.
SPEAKER_01: If you've ever processed your own animal, whether it's a farm animal, you're processing a beef or you're processing a deer or whatever, you know that's that's work.
SPEAKER_01: Imagine doing that over and over and over again, day after day after day, week after week, month after month, year after year.
SPEAKER_01: They worked hard.
SPEAKER_01: They received animals from the book from the worshippers, they prepared the animals for sacrifice, and then they performed the sacrifice.
SPEAKER_01: And then get this on top of the required sacrifices of every day, on the Sabbath, those required sacrifices doubled.
SPEAKER_01: They had to work twice as much, twice as hard on the Sabbath.
SPEAKER_01: No, wait a minute.
SPEAKER_01: You can find those details in Numbers 28.
SPEAKER_01: If God intended to limit the amount of work done on a Sabbath such that his people couldn't even satisfy their hunger, then how come the priests get a free pass?
SPEAKER_01: When the priests are working double on a Sabbath day, why can't the disciples pick some years of grain to satisfy hunger?
SPEAKER_01: Fair question, right?
SPEAKER_01: Verse 5, have you not read in the law how on the Sabbath the priests in the temple profane the Sabbath and are guiltless?
SPEAKER_01: I tell you something greater than the Sabbath, than the temple is here.
SPEAKER_01: And that gives you the key for understanding what Jesus is saying.
SPEAKER_01: Jewish thought of the time, God stood at the top.
SPEAKER_01: Nothing and nobody was greater than God Himself.
SPEAKER_01: So if you were going to say, swear on your Bible like people do today, they would say, God is at the top.
SPEAKER_01: You're going to swear on the name of God.
SPEAKER_01: Well, if you're going to do something that's close to that, but not quite that high, the temple's right underneath of it.
SPEAKER_01: The only thing greater than the temple is God Himself.
SPEAKER_01: God had established the temple system.
SPEAKER_01: He'd established the sacrificial system.
SPEAKER_01: He had commanded that the priests function in certain ways.
SPEAKER_01: And so all they're doing is being obedient to what God had called them to do.
SPEAKER_01: It's the domain of God.
SPEAKER_01: Everything about their work and their lives is centered on the temple.
SPEAKER_01: And so if the temple service meant working on the Sabbath, the thought that it's okay with God because it's his temple.
SPEAKER_01: God gives the orders for his temple.
SPEAKER_01: And what does Jesus say?
SPEAKER_01: He says, I tell you, something greater than the temple is here.
SPEAKER_01: Wait, what?
SPEAKER_01: What's greater than the temple?
SPEAKER_01: God himself.
SPEAKER_01: So what are you saying, Jesus?
SPEAKER_01: Well, in a veiled way, Jesus is saying that he's God.
SPEAKER_01: But more importantly, he's saying that God has the priority to give grace in the time of need when he so chooses.
SPEAKER_01: God chooses to do so with his priests in the temple, and he chooses to do so in a time of need for human beings.
SPEAKER_01: In other words, the law of God, as given in the Ten Commandments and as given to ancient Israel, was never intended to be served by human beings, but rather to be an aid and a help to human beings.
SPEAKER_01: That's why, when Mark records this same situation in his gospel, in Mark chapter 2, verse 27, it says the Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath.
SPEAKER_01: So if the Sabbath ends up being hard and creating hardship for human beings, something's not quite right there.
SPEAKER_01: God began the institution of the Sabbath on the seventh day to give aid, to give help, to give rest and refreshment to human beings, not to starve them.
SPEAKER_01: So if restricting the fulfilling of man's needs is what's happening, then it's going beyond its created intent.
SPEAKER_01: And so by now we begin to start getting this idea of why Jesus asked.
SPEAKER_01: Aren't you reading your Bible?
SPEAKER_01: Because if you were reading your Bible and you were putting all these things together, you would begin to see that what you're saying isn't right.
SPEAKER_01: He just goes back again and again.
SPEAKER_01: What does the Bible say?
SPEAKER_01: But there's a third argument that challenges the Pharisees' perspective, and it's the second time actually that we've seen Jesus pull out this passage of scripture from Hosea 6, 6, where he says in verse 7 here, I desire mercy and not sacrifice.
SPEAKER_01: Jesus says, if you had known God's desire for mercy and not sacrifice, well, of course they know.
SPEAKER_01: They know their Bibles, they know this, they know that Samuel said that to Saul in the book of Kings.
SPEAKER_01: They know that it's repeated throughout the Old Testament, finding its greatest expression in Hosea 6, 6.
SPEAKER_01: It comes up in Matthew chapter 9, verse 13, where Jesus was confronted by the Pharisees saying, Why in the world are you eating supper with those tax collectors and those sinners?
SPEAKER_01: They're the scum of the earth.
SPEAKER_01: Why are you spending time with them?
SPEAKER_01: And Jesus said, Don't you know that this is the living out of God's desire to show mercy?
SPEAKER_01: Why do you need to learn this?
SPEAKER_01: You ought to have known this already.
SPEAKER_01: You who read your Bible, you who know what God expects, why do you not know this?
SPEAKER_01: And so he brings it out again here.
SPEAKER_01: Even in your own law, if you knew it well enough, it declares that God prefers showing mercy to those in need versus demanding obedience to law when there is a strict need.
SPEAKER_01: So this is a matter of authority.
SPEAKER_01: Who has the right to declare what's right or wrong?
SPEAKER_01: Who has the right to declare whether something is legal or illegal on the Sabbath day?
SPEAKER_01: According to the Jewish people, according to the Old Testament, only God had that right.
SPEAKER_01: So what do we see happening here?
SPEAKER_01: We see Jesus saying to everybody, I'm the one that calls the shots here.
SPEAKER_01: Now why is it important for us to start in chapter 11?
SPEAKER_01: It's important because all things have been handed over to the Son in order to reveal the Father.
SPEAKER_01: And so Jesus is living that out.
SPEAKER_01: He's saying, all things have been handed over to me.
SPEAKER_01: Do you know what that means?
SPEAKER_01: That means I am Lord of the Sabbath, even.
SPEAKER_01: You don't have the right, the authority, the power to decide what's right or what's wrong about the day that I made to help you.
SPEAKER_01: If only you would have read your Bible a little bit better and been a little clearer on it, you would have understand that you're going too far.
SPEAKER_01: So this is a matter of priorities.
SPEAKER_01: What are the priorities?
SPEAKER_01: What is the intent of God's law?
SPEAKER_01: The intent is to drive people to Him, not away from Him.
SPEAKER_01: God said the intention is to rest on the Sabbath day.
SPEAKER_01: Do you know why?
SPEAKER_01: Because you're not God.
SPEAKER_01: If you keep going day after day after day, week after week after week, with no rest, with no Sabbath day, you're going to crash and burn.
SPEAKER_01: Do you know why?
SPEAKER_01: You're not God.
SPEAKER_01: God said, I made this day to help you, not to starve you.
SPEAKER_01: Yes, God required sacrifices.
SPEAKER_01: God required obedience, not because he's in some despotic kind of mindset where he enjoys putting heavy burdens on people.
SPEAKER_01: No.
SPEAKER_01: He requires sacrifices, he requires obedience, but never to the exclusion of mercy in a time of need.
SPEAKER_01: You see, Jesus is Lord of all because all things have been handed over to him, and yet being Lord of all, he is gentle and lowly.
SPEAKER_01: He is humble in heart.
SPEAKER_01: We must never separate those truths.
SPEAKER_01: Yes, he is Lord.
SPEAKER_01: He has supreme authority over all.
SPEAKER_01: He does that by being gentle and lowly.
SPEAKER_01: And here Jesus is now calling into question the entire pharisaic tradition of interpreting the scriptures and then saying, okay, what rules do we add on to that so people can't get close to sinning?
SPEAKER_01: And in the end, what happened is the Pharisees had found guilt where there was none.
SPEAKER_01: Look at what Jesus says.
SPEAKER_01: Verse 7.
SPEAKER_01: If you had just known your Bibles, if you just paid a little bit more attention, you would not have condemned the guiltless.
SPEAKER_01: Who are they condemning?
SPEAKER_01: The disciples, right?
SPEAKER_01: Why does Jesus refer to the friends that were with David twice?
SPEAKER_01: Because Jesus has friends with him.
SPEAKER_01: Jesus is saying, you would never condemn the people that were with David.
SPEAKER_01: Why are you condemning my disciples?
SPEAKER_01: They're innocent, they're guiltless.
SPEAKER_01: But this was this was their pattern.
SPEAKER_01: And it's easy for us to get caught up in our own expectations that are built on our own traditions, aren't they?
SPEAKER_01: That are built on what we think is right, what we think is best, what we think is appropriate.
SPEAKER_01: Pretty soon our own traditions, our own desires, our own expectations become laws that if somebody transgresses those, we we react.
SPEAKER_01: Friends, scripture is always the authority.
SPEAKER_01: It's the place to which Jesus went.
SPEAKER_01: What does the word of God say?
SPEAKER_01: The Pharisees clearly thought that keeping the Sabbath was more important, keeping the Sabbath in their way was more important than meeting someone's needs.
SPEAKER_01: They held tightly to their authority to make the call, to make the decisions, to hold the power over the people, even when Scripture said something else.
SPEAKER_01: But Jesus is the one who gave the law.
SPEAKER_01: Jesus is the one that says, It all points to me.
SPEAKER_01: Do you remember when he was walking with the two disciples on the road to Emmaus the day of the resurrection?
SPEAKER_01: Comes alongside them and they're all filled with grief because Jesus died and says, beginning with this text, he led them through all the law and the prophets about him.
SPEAKER_01: All things have been handed over to Jesus.
SPEAKER_01: He is Lord of the Sabbath.
SPEAKER_01: They don't make the decisions, the word of God does.
SPEAKER_01: Rightly understood and rightly applied, the word of God paves the way.
SPEAKER_01: And when the word was made flesh and dwelt among us, he came with authority.
SPEAKER_01: He makes the decisions.
SPEAKER_01: But that authority is expressed with a gentleness because he is a God of compassion and humility, even to the point of understanding when his own people are hungry.
SPEAKER_01: But to the Pharisees, that meant only one thing.
SPEAKER_01: They don't get to decide.
SPEAKER_01: And this marks a dramatic cataclysmic shift in the life of Christ.
SPEAKER_01: Because rather than humbly submitting to the Word of God, they went out and conspired against him.
SPEAKER_01: How to destroy him.
SPEAKER_01: How do we react when our expectations and our place and our rights are infringed upon, challenged?
SPEAKER_01: But we we we can't end this morning without noting a very significant irony.
SPEAKER_01: These stubbornly rebellious Pharisees condemned the innocent.
SPEAKER_01: Jesus very clearly uses scripture to say, My disciples, they're guiltless.
SPEAKER_01: They haven't done anything wrong.
SPEAKER_01: They haven't broken the law.
SPEAKER_01: And had the Pharisees understood their Bibles, they would not have condemned the guiltless.
SPEAKER_01: In the same way, had they understood their Bibles properly, they would not have condemned the Messiah.
SPEAKER_01: The ultimate in innocence.
SPEAKER_01: But how wonderful and how incomprehensible is the grace and the mercy of our God.
SPEAKER_01: Because what we see happening is that on the cross, in this wonderful exchange, Jesus, the guiltless, the innocent, is condemned.
SPEAKER_01: And an incredible irony, by condemning the innocent disciples, the Pharisees were displaying the inexplicable grace of God in condemning his innocent son on behalf of those who really were guilty.
SPEAKER_01: What these Pharisees were to the disciples and condemning the innocent God, the Father, was to God the Son.
SPEAKER_01: The Son of God, the Word of God incarnate, became sin for us.
SPEAKER_01: The guiltless bearing our guilt.
SPEAKER_01: And the Father condemned our sin as his son bore that condemnation in our place so that the Father could be eternally gentle and lowly toward us by pardoning our sin every time we cross the line.
SPEAKER_01: And so in the cross, we see the sovereign justice of a holy God.
SPEAKER_01: And we see the righteous compassion of a gentle and lowly Savior who says, Come, take up your cross and follow me.
SPEAKER_01: Would you pray with me?
SPEAKER_01: Lord Jesus, may we see you in all of your revealed glory.
SPEAKER_01: We confess that too often we get we get bent out of shape, unnecessarily.
SPEAKER_01: We say things, we do things, we we we live in such a way that we develop our own traditions, our own patterns, and we don't we don't see that maybe they're in contradiction or error.
SPEAKER_01: Or maybe maybe we do stand on the right.
SPEAKER_01: Maybe we have done things well and and we don't respond to those who've transgressed with grace and with mercy.
SPEAKER_01: May we receive your word with clarity and with humble hearts that say, Lord, make us more like you.
SPEAKER_01: And as we come and we stand before the cross, we we are humbled.
SPEAKER_01: That too often we put ourselves in your place as the ones calling the shots.
SPEAKER_01: May we humble ourselves before you with gratitude and humble hearts.
SPEAKER_01: Then instead of me being condemned, you bore my guilt.
SPEAKER_01: We give you praise and thanks for all of this.
SPEAKER_01: In Christ's name, amen.
SPEAKER_00: That concludes this sermon from Faith Evangelical Free Church.
SPEAKER_00: Our mission is to declare the Word of God and disciple believers into mature, devoted followers of Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: You can learn more by visiting our website at faithfree.com.