Jesus and the Forbidding Pharisees – Part 1
The Changing Of The Tide
Matthew 12:1-14
“There is a tide in the affairs of men, which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune; omitted, all the voyage of their life is bound in shallows and in miseries.”
William Shakespeare, Julius Caesar
English dramatist & poet (1564 - 1616)
Can you think of a moment in time that was so significant a turning point in your life that the course of your entire life was forever changed? A moment when the choice you made set you out upon a path in of life, had you going in a direction from which you could never return?
In our text today, we find the affairs of Jesus at just such a moment in time –a time when the tide of His life and ministry are about to go in a direction that He can never return from.
His response to these two challenges made by the Pharisees will cause the course of the rest of His life to go one of two ways. He can be accepted by the spiritual and religious leaders of His day, or He can be rejected by them. He can choose to not make any waves, or He can choose to really rock the boat. Choose to not make waves and be accepted, He becomes like them. Rock the boat to the point of tipping it over and be rejected, they will oppose Him to the death – His death.
Guess which one He chooses?
Let’s look at what is taking place in the story and see what happens. We will also want to look at Mark 2:23-28, and Luke 6:1-5. The three accounts together will give us a very real and vivid picture of the events of this day. It is probably one of the more important days in Jesus’ ministry.
It is Saturday; it is the Sabbath; it is the traditional weekly holy day of rest for the Jews, just as it has been down through the ages. Jesus and His disciples are walking through a wheat or barley field – either one is possible based on the words used in the texts. I always picture them talking and laughing, full of energy, vibrant and alive, excited about going to synagogue that morning and sharing their Teacher open the Scriptures for them and anyone else who might be in attendance.
They haven’t had breakfast – in fact, they were good Jews and didn’t do any work at all on the Sabbath. The laws regarding the keeping of the Sabbath as given by God through Moses to the Children of Israel in the wilderness we somewhat specific.
In Exodus 20:9-11, God said, "Six days you shall labor and do all your work, but the seventh day is a sabbath of the LORD your God; in it you shall not do any work, you or your son or your daughter, your male or your female servant or your cattle or your sojourner who stays with you. For in six days the LORD made the heavens and the 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.”
Later, in Exodus 31:13-17, God stresses the critical nature keeping of the Sabbath as a day holy and apart when He proclaims to Moses, "But as for you, speak to the sons of Israel, saying, ’You shall surely observe My sabbaths; for this is a sign between Me and you throughout your generations, that you may know that I am the LORD who sanctifies you. Therefore you are to observe the sabbath, for it is holy to you. Everyone who profanes it shall surely be put to death; for whoever does any work on it, that person shall be cut off from among his people. For six days work may be done, but on the seventh day there is a sabbath of complete rest, holy to the LORD; whoever does any work on the sabbath day shall surely be put to death. So the sons of Israel shall observe the sabbath, to celebrate the sabbath throughout their generations as a perpetual covenant. It is a sign between Me and the sons of Israel forever; for in six days the LORD made heaven and earth, but on the seventh day He ceased from labor, and was refreshed."
Look at the command in verse 15: “Whoever does any work on the sabbath day shall surely be put to death.” That sounds pretty darn serious, wouldn’t you say? In fact, if you look at Numbers 15:32-26, you will find the account there of a man being caught gathering firewood outside the camp on the Sabbath, being taken to the High Court of Moses and Aaron, and the sentence of death being passed. That man was stoned to death in keeping with God’s command.
What kind of work was forbidden? Any kind of work – no sowing or reaping, no pruning or harvesting (gathering is another word used for reaping and harvesting), and no buying or selling was to be done (Nehemiah 10:31; 13:15-17). No burdens were to be carried (Nehemiah 13:19; Jeremiah 17:21), the pursuit of personal pleasure was to be averted (Isaiah 58:13) and worship was to be pursued instead. In God’s dealings with the Children of Israel, the Sabbath was a key issue (see for example Ezekiel 20:12-20).
There were simple tasks that could be performed, but the point of observing the Sabbath was two-fold: first, to have one day set aside to devote to an all-day focus on worshiping the Lord and get away from focusing on profit and personal pleasure; second, to have one day set aside to rest and rejuvenate. Studies today show that people who take at least one full day of from work and do not replace it with a day of other intense activity add livability to a longer life. Stress is reduced and much more manageable, and personal health and longevity are enhanced and increased.
The Pharisees now – oh, those fabulous, Forbidding Pharisees! They loved the Law of God, and especially the Sabbath, so much that they built the most extensive and intricate fence around the laws governing the do’s and don’ts of Sabbath-keeping of any of the fences they built to keep the people from breaking God’s Law.
The rules had become so stringent about the Sabbath that twice Jerusalem had been overrun and defeated because the attacks came on the Sabbath and they refused to defend themselves on the Sabbath. Their enemies were dumbfounded, to say the least, when they observed that the Jews did nothing but die when they were attacked on the Sabbath. In modern times, however, the Jewish people have made the observation that when their enemies try this tactic today, it would not honor God for His chosen people to be wiped out. Some of their greatest victories in the last forty years have come about because their enemies have chosen to launch assaults against Israel on the Sabbath.
In order to correctly understand what the Bible says about the Sabbath, we need to see the truth about it as it unfolds progressively in the pages of Scripture. God’s revelation concerning the Sabbath did not occur all at once, but rather it occurred slowly over the course of Israel’s history. To retrace that progressive revelation through the Scriptures is important in order for anyone to come to a correct conclusion about this important subject.
The first occurrence of the Sabbath is in Exodus 16:22-30, and it comes in the context of the Israelites receiving manna from heaven for food. In that event, God instructed Moses that manna would not be given on the Sabbath because every person was to rest from their work.
The important thing to notice is that the "Sabbath observance" was an already established pattern for the people of Israel. Somewhere along the line, God’s people had already been practicing a Sabbath observance (probably a truth handed down from the days of Adam and Eve).
The next occurrence of the Sabbath is in Exodus 20:8-11, the giving of the Ten Commandments. Two things are noteworthy here to observe: first, the Sabbath observance was broadened out from just a day of no work to one of holiness: "remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy."
God did not want His people to be just plain idle on the Sabbath. He wanted them to cease their secular activities and to engage in spiritual activities like public and private worship.
The second thing to observe is this: God gave the example of Sabbath rest in His own creative work when He rested after the six days of the making of the world.
Next we see that the prohibition against work was expanded from not collecting manna to one against all labor in general. The Sabbath restriction was now grouped together with the rest of God’s law. Thus, we see that the pattern of life in the nation of Israel was one of six days of work, with every seventh day being one of rest and holiness. This would also apply to the land itself, which would be given a Sabbath year of rest for every six it was worked. It was Israel’s failure to observe these Sabbaths that caused God to send them into captivity – but there’ll be more on that at another time.
In Exodus 31:12-18, God connects the Sabbath with the covenant between Himself and His people. Holy living was the covenant expectation of God for His people, and this passage draws this out distinctly. The Sabbath observance is made a perpetual one for Israel and it was to serve as a "sign" of the covenant. Anyone who violated the Sabbath through work or sinful and evil behavior was guilty of "profaning" this day. At this point, the Sabbath is pointedly a tool in the hand of God to teach His people about sanctified living.
Some other passages in the Pentateuch give a little bit more information about the Sabbath: Exodus 34:21, during seasonal events like plowing and harvesting, there were no exceptions; Exodus 35:2-3, no fire building in the home on a Sabbath so that women wouldn’t have to work to make hot meals; Leviticus 23:3, specials holy feast days were to end on the Sabbath; Leviticus 25 & 26, the land was to have a Sabbath rest every seven years; and Deuteronomy 5:12-15, which is almost the same as Exodus 20, an added reason for keeping the Sabbath was given, namely remembering God’s freeing the Israelites from their bondage in Egypt.
Other Old Testament passages to note concerning the Sabbath are Psalm 92, appropriate worship activities for the Sabbath; Isaiah 56:1-8, where Sabbath keeping is no mere external ritual but must be connected with righteousness and justice.
Also, two groups of people were allowed to partake of Sabbath blessings besides the Jews themselves: the foreigner and the eunuch; Isaiah 58:13-14, a warning against the pursuit of selfish pleasures on the Sabbath; Jeremiah 17:21-27, a warning against commercial activity on the Sabbath, especially where Jerusalem was concerned; Ezekiel 20:12-26; 22:8-16, again a warning against profaning the Sabbath; and Nehemiah 10:28-31; 13:15-22, a post-exilic example of the need of the people to be committed to Sabbath keeping in Israel.
So we see that Sabbath-keeping was given to Israel as a means of making them into a holy nation. By ceasing from secular work on each seventh day, and by engaging in holy activities on the Sabbath, the nation was reminded of God’s covenant with them and His works on their behalf (including creation and deliverance from Egypt). Severe penalties were attached to this law for Sabbath-breakers, including the death penalty (Exodus 35:2).
What principles can be derived from the giving of the Sabbath and the rules associated with it in the Old Testament? First, it is good to imitate God in His example of rest and His example of holiness. Second, obedience to God’s commands from a heart of faith will result in "delight:" Isaiah 58:13-14 "If because of the Sabbath, you turn your foot From doing your own pleasure on My holy day, And call the Sabbath a delight, the holy day of the Lord honorable, And shall honor it, desisting from your own ways, From seeking your own pleasure, And speaking your own word, then you will take delight in the Lord."
In order to understand how Jesus dealt with the Sabbath issue, one must know that the Pharisees had taken the rules for the Sabbath and turned them into a body of restrictions so burdensome that the people lived in constant fear and guilt over them. During the 400 years between the Testaments, the Pharisees had come to dominate the religious scene in Israel.
One scholar (Diffenbacher) wrote the following about this: "The law lays it down that the Sabbath Day is to be kept holy, and that on it no work is to be done.
That is a great principle. But these Jewish legalists had a passion for definition. So they asked: What is work? All kinds of things were classified as work. For instance, "to carry a burden" on the Sabbath Day is to work. But next, a burden has to be defined. So the Scribal Law lays it down that a burden is "food equal in weight to a dried fig, enough wine for mixing in a goblet, milk enough for one swallow, honey enough to put upon a wound, oil enough to anoint a small member, water enough to moisten an eye salve, paper enough to write a customs house notice upon, ink enough to write two letters of the alphabet, reed enough to make a pen...” and so on endlessly.
So they spent hours arguing whether a man could or could not lift a lamb from one place to another on the Sabbath, whether a tailor committed a sin if he went out with a needle in his robe, whether a woman might wear a brooch, even if a man might go out on the Sabbath with artificial teeth or an artificial limb, or if a man might lift his child on the Sabbath Day. These things to them were the essence of religion. Their religion was a legalism of petty rules and regulations. We can hardly be surprised to find a head-on collision between the Scribes and Pharisees and our Lord over the issue of the Sabbath."
Matthew 12:1-8 gives the incident of the Lord’s disciples picking the heads of grain to eat on the Sabbath. When the Pharisees saw it, they went to Jesus and accused them of Sabbath-breaking. The Lord’s response was to acquiesce regarding the charge ("yes, they did what you said"), but to turn to the greater issues at hand. Jesus cited David’s eating of consecrated bread (1 Samuel 21:1-9).
Notice the common elements of these two events: David and Jesus both had followers who broke the Sabbath; food was eaten to alleviate hunger; and there were considerations that justified the Sabbath-breaking.
Thus, since David’s action was acceptable to the Judaism of the day, then the action of His disciples was also acceptable, or to put it another way, Sabbath-breaking was acceptable for the right reasons. Since David was the future king, it was acceptable for his followers to eat the consecrated bread and, likewise, it was acceptable for the disciples to break the Sabbath-rules because of Who Jesus was!
Twice in this passage, in Matthew 12:3, and in Matthew 12:5, Jesus asks them, “have you not read?” What a slap in the face! These men, these scholars who prided themselves on having not only read but also memorized the law, are being taken to task by this hillbilly carpenter and accused of being ignorant of what the Scriptures say! Now, that is bold!
As a teacher with hardheaded pupils, Jesus reminds them of the very clear teaching of the Scriptures they hold so dear. He reminds them that there is more to the Word of God than just the words – there is a heart to the message. And, they seem to have missed it.
Jesus drives this point home even further when He says, "that on the Sabbath the priests in the Temple break the Sabbath, and are innocent. I say to you, that something greater than the Temple is here...” It was not the greatness of the priests that justified their Sabbath-breaking, but the greatness of the Temple and religious service.
But even as great as the Temple was, Jesus claimed to be greater; in fact, He was the Lord of the Sabbath "The Son of Man is Lord of the Sabbath" (Matthew 12:8; Luke 6:5), and "The Sabbath was made for man, and not man for the Sabbath" (Mark 2:27).
Since He is the Lord, anything proclaims as being Sabbath observance is in fact Sabbath observance!
In their mechanical, ritualistic attempt at Sabbath-keeping, the Pharisees had missed the essence of the Law, which was mercy and compassion, just as Hosea had spoken, "I desire compassion, and not a sacrifice." This is the second time Jesus has reprimanded them with this quote from Hosea 6:6.
The first time, you’ll remember, was Matthew 9:13. That was the incident where the Scribes and Pharisees got after Jesus’ disciples and asked them in verse 11, “Why is your Teacher eating with the tax-gatherers and sinners?”
The point Jesus is making in both instances is that, even though they had strict observance of and adherence to the legalities and technicalities of their observance of the Law, their hearts were putrid and their observances meant nothing.
This should be a reminder to them and to us of God’s very strong words in Isaiah 1:11-17, and Micah 6:6-8.
We can be as technically accurate as we want and still miss the mark. We can know every detail of the Word of God and still not understand what it says. We can grasp the most intricate nuances of the technicalities of the most complex of Scripture passages, but we can be completely wrong on all counts if we fail to grasp the heart of God in what He is saying.
Knowing the Book is one thing – knowing the Author is another thing entirely.
The New Testament reveals that Jesus is the Lord of the Sabbath and that He did away with the need for Sabbath-keeping as a means to holy living. Because the law points out sin, it cannot save from sin. Only belief in the Lord Jesus can save from sin. Therefore, in the church age, worship occurs on the first day of the week, Sunday, in memorial of the resurrection of Jesus. Sabbath-keeping is seen as a tool of false teachers to drive people away from the gospel of grace, and only believers who are "weak" in faith will seek to keep the Sabbath rules of the Old Testament. Christians can look forward to the day in heaven when we will enter into that perfect REST of paradise, which awaits every true believer in Jesus!
Lesson
R reason for the Sabbath was holiness
E exceptions to the rules were allowed
S simple faith in Christ is enough
T take delight in God’s plan
