Lord of the Sabbath

The Gospel Of Mark • Sermon • Submitted 4 months ago • Presented 5 months ago

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Jesus explains that He is the Lord of the Sabbath and how the law should be applied. Grace and Mercy is at the heart of the Law, doing good is the key to applying the Law.

Notes

Transcript

Lord of the Sabbath

Scripture Reading:

Mark 2:23–3:6 NASB95

And it happened that He was passing through the grainfields on the Sabbath, and His disciples began to make their way along while picking the heads of grain. 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 he and his companions became hungry; how he entered the house of God in the time of Abiathar the high priest, and ate the consecrated bread, which is not lawful for anyone to eat except the priests, and he also gave it to those who were with him?” Jesus said to them, “The Sabbath was made for man, and not man for the Sabbath. “So the Son of Man is Lord even of the Sabbath.” He entered again into a synagogue; and a man was there whose hand was withered. They were watching Him to see if He would heal him on the Sabbath, so that they might accuse Him. He said to the man with the withered hand, “Get up and come forward!” And He said to them, “Is it lawful to do good or to do harm on the Sabbath, to save a life or to kill?” But they kept silent. After looking around at them with anger, grieved at their hardness of heart, He said to the man, “Stretch out your hand.” And he stretched it out, and his hand was restored. The Pharisees went out and immediately began conspiring with the Herodians against Him, as to how they might destroy Him.

I. Introduction

a. Last week we discussed how Jesus called Levi (Matthew) to follow him.

b. We saw how that Jesus had went to a dinner with Matthew and a bunch of his friends. The Pharisees got real judgmental, why does He eat with sinners and publicans(Tax Collectors).

c. We see that Jesus told them He has come to all the sinner to repentance.

d. Then we see John’s disciples and the Pharisees was getting onto Him, why doesn’t your disciples fast.

e. We learned that part of the ritual laws that the Pharisees kept, was the fasted twice a week, Mondays and Thursdays.

f. Jesus told them the parable about the new cloth patch on old clothing and the new wine in old wineskins.

II. History of this times, who is the Pharisee and who is the Herodians

A. Hasmonean Dynasty

a. As part of the ancient world conquered by Alexander the Great of Greece (332 BCE), the Land remained a Jewish theocracy under Syrian-based Seleucid rulers. When the Jews were prohibited from practicing Judaism and their Temple was desecrated as part of an effort to impose Greek-oriented culture and customs on the entire population, the Jews rose in revolt (166 BCE). First led by Mattathias of the priestly Hasmonean family and then by his son Judah the Maccabee, the Jews subsequently entered Jerusalem and purified the Temple (164 BCE), events commemorated each year by the festival of Hanukkah.

b. Following further Hasmonean victories (147 BCE), the Seleucids restored autonomy to Judea, as the Land of Israel was now called, and, with the collapse of the Seleucid kingdom (129 BCE), Jewish independence was again achieved. Under the Hasmonean dynasty, which lasted about 80 years, the kingdom regained boundaries not far short of Solomon's realm, political consolidation under Jewish rule was attained and Jewish life flourished.

c. During this time three sects of religious leaders emerged:

i. Of the various factions that emerged under Hasmonean rule, three are of particular interest: the Pharisees, Sadducees, and Essenes.

* The Pharisees

The most important of the three were the Pharisees because they are the spiritual fathers of modern Judaism. Their main distinguishing characteristic was a belief in an Oral Law that God gave to Moses at Sinai along with the Torah. The Torah, or Written Law, was akin to the U.S. Constitution in the sense that it set down a series of laws that were open to interpretation. The Pharisees believed that God also gave Moses the knowledge of what these laws meant and how they should be applied. This oral tradition was codified and written down roughly three centuries later in what is known as the Talmud.

The Pharisees also maintained that an after-life existed, and that God punished the wicked and rewarded the righteous in the world to come. They also believed in a messiah who would herald an era of world peace.

Pharisees were in a sense blue-collar Jews who adhered to the tenets developed after the destruction of the Temple; that is, such things as individual prayer and assembly in synagogues.

* The Sadducees

The Sadducees were elitists who wanted to maintain the priestly caste, but they were also liberal in their willingness to incorporate Hellenism into their lives, something the Pharisees opposed. The Sadducees rejected the idea of the Oral Law and insisted on a literal interpretation of the Written Law; consequently, they did not believe in an afterlife, since it is not mentioned in the Torah. The focus of Sadducee life was rituals associated with the Temple.

The Sadducees disappeared around 70 A.D., after the destruction of the Second Temple. None of the writings of the Sadducees has survived, so the little we know about them comes from their Pharisaic opponents.

These two “parties” served in the Great Sanhedrin, a kind of Jewish Supreme Court made up of 71 members whose responsibility was to interpret civil and religious laws.

* The Essenes

A third faction, the Essenes, emerged out of disgust with the other two. This sect believed the others had corrupted the city and the Temple. They moved out of Jerusalem and lived a monastic life in the desert, adopting strict dietary laws and a commitment to celibacy.

The Essenes are particularly interesting to scholars because they are believed to be an offshoot of the group that lived in Qumran, near the Dead Sea. In 1947, a Bedouin shepherd stumbled into a cave containing various ancient artifacts and jars containing manuscripts describing the beliefs of the sect and events of the time.

The most important documents, often only parchment fragments that had to be meticulously restored, were the earliest known copies of the Old Testament. The similarity of the substance of the material found in the scrolls to that in the modern scriptures has confirmed the authenticity of the Bible used today.

Herodians

HERODIANS, a sect or party mentioned in the New Testament together with the *Pharisees as opponents of Jesus (Mark 3:6; 12:13; Matt. 22:16). There are differences of opinion as to their identity, and the Church Fathers already put forward various theories all connected in one form or another with the name of *Herod the Great. Some recent scholars identify the Herodians with the "partisans of Herod" mentioned by Josephus (Ant., 14:479), though he mentions them as living at the beginning of Herod's rule in Judea. Others connect the name with Herod *Antipas, the son of Herod. In the absence of clear evidence, these must be regarded as mere conjectures. A. Schalit, who identifies the Herodians with the partisans of Herod, is of the opinion that they were his supporters among the Jewish community who urged the people to accept his sovereignty and spread messianic ideas which they applied to Herod and his rule.

III. Question of the Sabbath (picking grain and eating on the Sabbath)

You are allowed to pick grain, but not harvest your neighbors grain field. Deuteronomy 23:25, ““When you enter your neighbor’s standing grain, then you may pluck the heads with your hand, but you shall not wield a sickle in your neighbor’s standing grain.”

However, the Pharisees, the keepers of the Oral Law has 39 laws that you cannot do on the sabbath, which four of them may deal with this incident. Only going to mention two of them for times sake.

i. 16 - Reaping (Note 33)

This includes cutting or plucking any growing thing.

Agriculture is again one of the main ways in which man shows his dominance over nature. This category is therefore also one of those mentioned in the Torah, as we find (Ex. 34:21), “Six days shall you work, but you shall rest on the seventh; in plowing and in harvesting, you shall rest.”

Such activities as plucking a flower and plucking a fruit from a tree come under this heading. The same is true of mowing a lawn.

It was also legislated that we do not handle any growing flowers or plants. It is also forbidden to climb a tree or smell a growing flower.

Fruit which falls from a tree on the Sabbath may not be used on the same day.

The use of animals as well as plants is forbidden since there is the concern that one might forget and inadvertently pluck a branch for use as a switch.

ii. 18 - Threshing (Note 35)

This includes all operations where food is separated from its natural container.

Both solid and liquid foods are included.

The prime example is threshing grain to remove it from its husk.

Squeezing a fruit for its juice is also included. The same is true of milking a cow.

c. Mark 2:25 -26, “ And He *said to them, “Have you never read what David did when he was in need and he and his companions became hungry; how he entered the house of God in the time of Abiathar the high priest, and ate the consecrated bread, which is not lawful for anyone to eat except the priests, and he also gave it to those who were with him? Jesus said to them, “The Sabbath was made for man, and not man for the Sabbath. ”

d. 1 Samuel 21:1-6, “Then David came to Nob to Ahimelech the priest; and Ahimelech came trembling to meet David and said to him, “Why are you alone and no one with you?” David said to Ahimelech the priest, “The king has commissioned me with a matter and has said to me, ‘Let no one know anything about the matter on which I am sending you and with which I have commissioned you; and I have directed the young men to a certain place.’ “Now therefore, what do you have on hand? Give me five loaves of bread, or whatever can be found.” The priest answered David and said, “There is no ordinary bread on hand, but there is consecrated bread; if only the young men have kept themselves from women.” David answered the priest and said to him, “Surely women have been kept from us as previously when I set out and the vessels of the young men were holy, though it was an ordinary journey; how much more then today will their vessels be holy?” So the priest gave him consecrated bread; for there was no bread there but the bread of the Presence which was removed from before the LORD, in order to put hot bread in its place when it was taken away.”

e. Problem of Abiathar and Ahimelech. Abiathar is the son of Ahimelech the Priest, just like Aaron was priest along with His sons. Therefore both men would have been present at the time that David showed up to retrieve the shewbread.

d. Shewbread, twelve fresh loaves of bread would be placed in the Tabernacle and then the old ones would be eaten by the priests. But the priest gave it to David and his men who were hungry and running from Saul, who was trying to kill him.

e. What was Jesus trying to tell us here. There were several times that Jesus referred to a higher things of the law that need to done, instead of just keeping a bunch of rules. Therefore indicating the works of the law rather than faith in God.

f. Matthew 23:23 was calling out the Pharisee and He said this, ““Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you tithe mint and dill and cummin, and have neglected the weightier provisions of the law: justice and mercy and faithfulness; but these are the things you should have done without neglecting the others.”

g. Matthew 12:7, ““But if you had known what this means, ‘I DESIRE COMPASSION, AND NOT A SACRIFICE,’ you would not have condemned the innocent.”

h. James 2:13, “For judgment will be merciless to one who has shown no mercy; mercy triumphs over judgment.”

i. Jesus was not telling them not to keep the law, but was showing them the folly of their application, which does not allow for mercy, justice, grace, goodness. Which these things are to be taken over then just keeping a bunch of rules that allows no room for mercy.

j. Jesus was showing that there are times that necessity and healing trumps the keeping rules to a point that it doesn’t allow mercy.

k. The Sabbath was made for man, not the other way around and He was showing them that Jesus, Son of Man, God in flesh was the Lord of the Sabbath.

IV. Healing the man on the Sabbath

a. Now a similar incident happened when Jesus healed the man with a withered arm. However, I want you to take note of the following:

b. Mark 3:6, “The Pharisees went out and immediately began conspiring with the Herodians against Him, as to how they might destroy Him.”

c. Now there is no mention of exactly what they did in these meetings, but they went out immediately meaning it was on the sabbath and held meeting to see how they can destroy Jesus. Now, were they breaking the law? I wonder!

V. Summary

a. Jesus Christ is one of mercy, grace, forgiveness, release from bondage, setting people free, He was about keeping God’s law, but when keeping laws and regulations so ridged where there is no room for helping, feeding the hungry, healing and helping is not what God intended.

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