Scripture
In our study of Luke’s Gospel we come now to the sixth chapter. Luke introduced Jesus to his readers in Luke 1:1-4:13. Then in Luke 4:14-9:50 he described the ministry of Jesus.
One notable feature of Jesus’ ministry was the growing opposition to him. Luke described increasing criticism of Jesus.
In today’s text we learn about yet another incident in which the Pharisees criticized Jesus. This particular incident took place on a Sabbath. In his response to their criticism, we learn more about Jesus’ understanding of his own identity.
Let’s read about Jesus as lord of the Sabbath in Luke 6:1-5:
1 On a Sabbath, while he was going through the grainfields, his disciples plucked and ate some heads of grain, rubbing them in their hands. 2 But some of the Pharisees said, “Why are you doing what is not lawful to do on the Sabbath?” 3 And Jesus answered them, “Have you not read what David did when he was hungry, he and those who were with him: 4 how he entered the house of God and took and ate the bread of the Presence, which is not lawful for any but the priests to eat, and also gave it to those with him?” 5 And he said to them, “The Son of Man is lord of the Sabbath.” (Luke 6:1-5)
Introduction
Commentator Tom Wright wrote about a relative of his who likes to tell of an occasion when he flew, with some business friends, to Ireland to watch a rugby match. When they got off the plane, there were no customs officers waiting to receive them. So two or three of them went into the official booths, put on the caps they found there, and inspected the passports of the other people who were arriving. They had no official authority, but it seemed to work.
Tom Wright said that he often wondered, having heard that story, what happened when the real customs officers arrived. But he did not know the end of the story.
Wright suggested that this is how Jesus appeared to many onlookers. He held no public office. He was not ordained as a priest. He was not part of any well-known pressure group, such as the Pharisees, who had their own opinions of how the law should be kept, which they tried to push on the entire society. He had no formal training as a teacher.
And yet there he was, so to speak, in the airport arrivals zone telling people what to do, giving them permission to do things that they had been told were wrong.
Who did he think he was? That is, in fact, the main question Luke wants us to ask. Luke was not so interested in asking, “Do we or do we not keep the Sabbath?” but rather, “Who did Jesus think he was?”
In today’s lesson we learn that Jesus is lord of the Sabbath.
Lesson
The analysis of Jesus as lord of the Sabbath as set forth in Luke 6:1-5 shows us Jesus’ understanding of his own identity.
Let’s use the following outline:
1. The Setting (6:1)
2. The Question (6:2)
3. The Answer (6:3-4)
4. The Declaration (6:5)
I. The Setting (6:1)
First, let’s begin by looking at the setting.
Luke told us in verse 1 that on a Sabbath, while Jesus was going through the grainfields, his disciples plucked and ate some heads of grain, rubbing them in their hands.
As we read this account we might think that the disciples were taking that which did not belong to them. However, what the disciples were doing was perfectly legal in their day. It was in fact one of the ways that God provided for his people, as it is written in Deuteronomy 23:25, “If you go into your neighbor’s standing grain, you may pluck the ears with your hand, but you shall not put a sickle to your neighbor’s standing grain.” One could not harvest one’s neighbor’s standing grain, but it was perfectly legal to pluck and eat the ears of grain.
The setting for this account then is that Jesus and his disciples were walking from one place to another. While they were going through the grainfields, his disciples helped themselves to some heads of grain, which was perfectly legal.
So, what was the problem? What caused the conflict?
Suddenly some Pharisees appeared on the scene and they asked Jesus a question.
II. The Question (6:2)
Second, notice the question.
Luke did not tell us where the Pharisees came from. They just appeared. Some commentators suggest that the Pharisees may have been secretly following Jesus in order to catch him breaking the law.
So, some of the Pharisees said to Jesus, “Why are you doing what is not lawful to do on the Sabbath?” (6:2).
This was very serious. The Pharisees believed that they had caught Jesus and his disciples breaking the law. Keeping the Sabbath was one of the distinguishing features of the people of God. It was a clear mark of distinction for the people of God in contrast to those who did not belong to God.
The Pharisees accused Jesus and his disciples of violating the fourth commandment, which states in Exodus 20:8–11:
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.”
The fourth commandment states that in addition to keeping the Sabbath day holy, no work was to be done on the Sabbath.
Over time the Jewish leaders had developed a series of thirty-nine clarifications of work, exotic legalisms, with each category capable of endless subdivision. The Mishnah explicitly listed as three of its thirty-nine categories “reaping … threshing, winnowing” (M. Shabbath, 7.2). Jesus’ disciples reaped when they “plucked. . . some heads of grain” and threshed and winnowed when they “rub[bed] them in their hands.” And when they “ate some heads of grain,” they prepared food on the Sabbath. According the Pharisees, Jesus and his disciples were guilty of four different violations of the Sabbath.
So, what’s the problem? The problem is that this was their law and not God’s law. The Pharisees had developed such an extensive legal code about ways to obey God’s law that it had become almost impossible to distinguish between their legal codes and God’s clear commandment. They were legalists. Commentator Philip Graham Ryken says:
The Pharisees were always telling people what to do and what not to do (especially what not to do), but they could not always tell the difference between their not-to-do list and God’s command. They were legalists, and as a result, they ended up weighing people down with all kinds of extrabiblical regulations for the Sabbath. Instead of being a day of delight, under the repressive regime of the Pharisees it became a burden.
What can we learn from the question of the Pharisees? We must not add rules and regulations to God’s command. We must be very careful not to enforce on others the decisions we make for ourselves about how to implement God’s commands in our own lives.
III. The Answer (6:3-4)
Third, let’s look at the answer Jesus gave the Pharisees.
Jesus could have told the Pharisees that his disciples were not breaking God’s commandment; they were only breaking the Pharisee’s man-made rules.
But he did not say that. He wanted to explain the underlying purpose of God’s commandment. So Jesus answered them and told them a story from the Old Testament, “Have you not read what David did when he was hungry, he and those who were with him: how he entered the house of God and took and ate the bread of the Presence, which is not lawful for any but the priests to eat, and also gave it to those with him?” (6:3-4).
Jesus was referring to an incident in the life of David. God had rejected Saul and had anointed David to serve as Israel’s next king. But Saul was still alive and on the throne. He hated David and wanted him killed. So, as a young man David was constantly on the run from Saul. This is where Jesus picked up the story, which is recorded in 1 Samuel 21.
David and his men once again fled from Saul and did not have time to gather provisions in their hasty escape. They got to the village of Nob where Ahimelech the priest met David. David said to Ahimelech, “Now then, what do you have on hand? Give me five loaves of bread, or whatever is here” (1 Samuel 21:3). But Ahimelech answered David, “I have no common bread on hand, but there is holy bread – if the young men have kept themselves from women” (1 Samuel 21:4).
The holy bread was also known “the bread of the Presence” (lechem happanim), which was kept in the tabernacle. This covenantal bread was baked fresh each week and then set out before the presence of God on a golden table. Every Sabbath fresh bread replaced the holy bread, which only the priests – and no one else – could eat, for God had said to Moses in Leviticus 24:5-6, 8-9:
5 “You shall take fine flour and bake twelve loaves from it; two tenths of an ephah shall be in each loaf. 6 And you shall set them in two piles, six in a pile, on the table of pure gold before the Lord. . . . 8 Every Sabbath day Aaron shall arrange it before the Lord regularly; it is from the people of Israel as a covenant forever. 9 And it shall be for Aaron and his sons, and they shall eat it in a holy place, since it is for him a most holy portion out of the Lord’s food offerings, a perpetual due.”
Because the bread was consecrated to God, only the priests could eat it. It was not lawful for any but the priests to eat the bread of the Presence. This was part of the ceremonial law. But David and his men were famished. Furthermore, David was the Lord’s anointed servant. What was Ahimelech to do?
Ahimelech understood the ceremonial law of God. He also understood that there was a higher duty to meet human need. Feeding David and his men was a work of necessity. So Ahimelech the priest gave David the holy bread, for there was no bread there but the bread of the Presence (1 Samuel 21:6).
By telling this story, Jesus was arguing from a harder case to an easier one. His logic was that if it was proper for David and his men to eat the bread of the Presence, as holy as it was, it was all the more appropriate for Jesus and his disciples to pick a little grain on the Sabbath. Dr. Joseph Pipa puts it like this:
If it was proper to violate a ceremonial law when the Lord’s anointed [i.e., David] was on the Lord’s business on the Sabbath, then surely the Anointed [i.e., Jesus] and His followers may break a man-made law while they are doing the Lord’s business on the Sabbath.
What David and his followers did was a violation of the ceremonial law, but it was still the right thing to do because it was necessary to meet a human need. God permits works of necessity above observance of sacred rituals in order to meet human need (cf. Matthew 12:6-7).
What Jesus’ disciples did on the Sabbath was not a violation of God’s law at all. What they did on the Sabbath was in fact perfectly legal. Like David’s followers, they were in the service of God’s anointed king, they were on a holy mission, and they had a physical need. So, if it was permissible for David to eat the bread of the Presence, it was all the more appropriate for Jesus’ disciples to gather enough grain to give them the strength they needed to follow Jesus. They were serving God’s Son on God’s Sabbath.
The problem with the Pharisees was that in addition to adding man-made rules and regulations to God’s command, they did not understand the true purpose of God’s law. The true purpose of God’s law is to enable us to love God and also to love our neighbor.
Yes, God has given us the fourth commandment. He has given it to us for rest and for worship. It is intended to be a delight for the people of God (Isaiah 58:13). We demonstrate our love for God by obeying the fourth commandment. And yet, Jesus’ answer teaches us that there are appropriate works of necessity on the Sabbath.
Now, Jesus could have ended the conversation at this point. The story of David and his followers eating the bread of the Presence cleared his own disciples of all wrongdoing. But Jesus went on to make a dramatic declaration.
IV. The Declaration (6:5)
Finally, observe the declaration.
And he said to them, “The Son of Man is lord of the Sabbath” (6:5).
One of Luke’s purposes in writing his Gospel was to reveal the identity of Jesus. He wanted his readers to understand the person and work of Jesus. So far in his Gospel, Luke has already told us that Jesus is “the Son of the Most High” (1:32), “a Savior, who is Christ the Lord” (2:11), and the beloved and well-pleasing Son of the Father (3:22). Luke has also shown us the authority of Jesus to preach the gospel, heal the body, cast out demons, forgive sinners, and call disciples to follow him.
But here at the beginning of chapter 6 is a dramatic declaration that Jesus is the Son of Man, and as the Son of Man, he is lord of the Sabbath.
Jesus most frequently referred to himself as “the Son of Man.” He is also referred to as “the Son of God.” R. C. Sproul points out that there is a tendency to consider the title “the Son of Man” as referring to Jesus’ humanity and the title “the Son of God” as referring to his deity. In fact, says Sproul, just the opposite is the case.
Although the title “the Son of God” was sometimes used to refer to Jesus’ deity, it more commonly referred to Jesus’ humanity in which he demonstrated obedience and submission to God the Father.
Similarly, although the title “the Son of Man” was sometimes used to refer to Jesus’ humanity, it more commonly referred to Jesus’ deity. “The Son of Man” was a reference to the heavenly vision of Daniel 7:9-14. God the Father is referred to as “the Ancient of Days” who sits in judgment over all humanity. And then “one like a son of man” came into the presence of the Ancient of Days. And to the son of man was given dominion and glory and a kingdom so that all peoples, nations, and languages should serve him. This is a clear reference to deity. By claiming the title “the Son of Man” for himself, Jesus was claiming to be divine while at the same time keeping his identity somewhat hidden from those who did not know what the title meant.
By telling the Pharisees that he is “the Son of Man” Jesus was in fact claiming to be God. And as God, he is lord of the Sabbath, for he in fact created the Sabbath.
Surprisingly, Jesus’ statement that he is lord of the Sabbath is sometimes used to sweep aside the Sabbath. Some Christians have the impression that Jesus was saying that the Sabbath no longer mattered. As lord of the Sabbath, he could do whatever he wanted with it, and what he wanted to do was eliminate the obligation to keep it as a day of worship and rest.
But, that is not what Jesus was saying. In fact, by saying that he was lord of the Sabbath, Jesus was not only making a claim to deity, but he was also affirming the abiding continuation of the fourth commandment.
God gave Moses the fourth commandment at Mt. Sinai. God established the law of working for six days and then resting for one day. This was patterned after his own work of creation in six days and resting on the seventh.
Because he is God, Jesus is sovereign over the Sabbath. He has not done away with the Sabbath, but in fact asserts its continuance by his lordship over the Sabbath. Since the creation of the world, God has required his people to keep one day in seven holy for rest and worship. Jesus preserved that command.
Conclusion
Therefore, having analyzed Jesus as lord of the Sabbath as set forth in Luke 6:1-5, we should submit to his lordship.
After the resurrection of Jesus on Sunday, the first day of the week, the Church began celebrating the Christian Sabbath on Sunday, which is now called “the Lord’s day” (Revelation 1:10). It was a powerful affirmation to the world that Jesus is indeed who he claimed to be – God in human form, and the Savior of sinners.
The Lord’s Day continues to be a day of rest and worship. Yes, Jesus permits works of necessity as well. But, it is primarily a day to rest from physical labor, so that our bodies can be restored and renewed.
But it is also a day which pictures for us rest from spiritual labor, as the writer says in Hebrews 4:9–10, “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.”
Jesus has finished the work of our salvation, so that we do not have to work our way to heaven.
Believe that Jesus is God. Then submit to his lordship over your life. Amen.
