JUST JESUS: CHAPTER BY CHAPTER THRU LUKE
Lawd of the Sabbath
LUKE 6:1-11
#JustJesus
INTRODUCTION… faithgateway.com/blogs/christian-books/christian-cuss-words
As I started to prepare my sermon, I read through Luke 6, which is where we will be today, and I noticed the word “lord” in 6:5. I wondered briefly if misusing the word ‘lord’ was a curse word. To me, saying “Good Lord” as an expression is probably not a good thing and is just an alternative to using God’s Name in vain, but then I wondered about saying: “Lordy Lordy look whose 40.” What about misspelling the word like “l-a-w-d”… does that get us around misusing the word? So, I did what any Bible-toting God-fearing Jesus-loving Spirit-led individual should never do… I googled it.
Tim Hawkins is a Christian comedian and wrote an article on the Faith Gateway website all about Christian curse words. He talks about our mouths and the obsession that many Christians have with not cursing which is a good solid Biblical command. He wanted to come up with “a list of the top 100 Christian cuss words that will suffice to help you express yourself, yet not develop too much of a testimony while doing so. The best method is to read this as fast as possible out loud in order to really gain a feel for flow and discover which ones work best for you.”
Here they are, listed in his article, in random order: “shucks, rats, gadzooks, shizzle, toot, crapola, holy moly, holy stinking moly, holy guacamole, holy mackerel, holy cow, holy smokes, holey buckets, bucket head, turd, fiddlesticks, fiddle faddle, flippin, horse hockey, horse feathers, horse patootie, phooey, bull twinkies, shut the front door, criminy, criminitly, cripes, good gravy, good grief, great googley moogley, great Caesar’s ghost, h-e double hockey sticks, bleep, son of a biscuit, son of a biscuit eater, son of a Baptist preacher, son of a bacon bit, son of a nutcracker, son of a motherless goat, for heaven’s sake, for the love of Pete, for Pete’s sake, for crying out loud, jumpin Jehoshaphat, raza fraza raza fraza, crud, crud muffin, gee willikers, mother of pearl, shucky darn, nerts, Fahrvergnügen, heavens to Betsy, Mylanta, what the hey, snot, bull snot, booger snot, fartknocker, jeepers, geeze Louise, Mother Francis, Judas Priest, Bob Saget, Pat Sajak, sheesh, booty, shut your pie hole, kiss my grits, malarkey, doo doo, caca, Bolshevik, gosh, what the what, what the devil, wingnut, ticked off, jackwagon, heck, shoot, dang, darn, darnit, dad burnit, dag nabbit, con sarnit, confound it, doggonnit, dad blame it, dad gummit, dad blast it, and suck eggs.”
Now, I am not trying to teach you to curse or to use these phrases, but I noticed in that list that the word “lord” or any sort of word like “lord” or misspelled l-a-w-d is not listed. The word “lord” is in our passage for today and that is what got me thinking about all this. I then asked Kristian and Lily who happened to be around as I was beginning my sermon and they weren’t so sure about “Lordy Lordy look whose 40” but they would not say it. They called in Melanie who wasn’t sure, but didn’t think there was anything wrong with it per se because you aren’t talking about God. I texted Kelly who said that it is taking the Lord’s Name in vain. I then decided that if I started preparing the sermon and all I was thinking about was curse words and how to curse without sinning that perhaps I needed to pray some more because obviously my mind was in the wrong place. So, I did that.
Let’s read from Luke 6. There is much in Luke 6. Luke 6 mentions the apostles by name, some of the beatitudes which are repeated from Matthew 5, teaching about love for our enemies, and important teaching about judging others. Most of us definitely need to read Luke 6:37-42 about judging others and apply it to our lives and our social media posts. Yet, it was the first 11 verses that caught my heart and mind and where we will focus our attention today.
READ LUKE 6:1-11 (ESV)
On a Sabbath, while He was going through the grain fields, 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.” 6 On another Sabbath, He entered the synagogue and was teaching, and a man was there whose right hand was withered. 7 And the scribes and the Pharisees watched Him, to see whether He would heal on the Sabbath, so that they might find a reason to accuse Him. 8 But He knew their thoughts, and He said to the man with the withered hand, “Come and stand here.” And He rose and stood there. 9 And Jesus said to them, “I ask you, is it lawful on the Sabbath to do good or to do harm, to save life or to destroy it?” 10 And after looking around at them all He said to him, “Stretch out your hand.” And he did so, and his hand was restored. 11 But they were filled with fury and discussed with one another what they might do to Jesus.
TRANSITION
What do we find in the beginning of Luke 6? We find a tale of two sabbaths and an important statement in the middle of the passage about the identity of Jesus. First, let’s talk a little about the word ‘Sabbath’ because it will be important later.
SABBATH
The English word Sabbath comes from the Hebrew word which means “to cease” or “to rest.” The word and concept are introduced in Genesis 2 when God ‘rested’ on the seventh day from creation and made a set aside holy day of rest.
READ GENESIS 2:2-3 (ESV)
And on the seventh day God finished His work that He had done, and He rested on the seventh day from all His work that He had done. 3 So God blessed the seventh day and made it holy, because on it God rested from all His work that He had done in creation.
These verses tell us that for God the seventh day was the day He ceased creating the world and became a day He set aside for rest for us. The Sabbath Day is the day we term Saturday, the last day of the week, and is a day of worship and rest and resetting ourselves for the week ahead. Sunday is the first day of the week which is why on any calendar Sunday is in the column furthest left and Saturday is the last day of the week which is why on any calendar Saturday is in the column furthest right. Overall, the Bible shares with us that the Sabbath Day is:
* holy and blessed
* should be remembered and kept holy
* belongs to God
* is a day free from work for all people and land and animals
There is some confusion about Saturday and Sunday and Sabbath for many Christians. Is the Sabbath Saturday or Sunday? Why is Sunday the holy day of rest and worship and not Saturday?
The Sabbath Day technically was and is Saturday. However, Christians have always gathered on the first day of the week making that day the holy day for followers of Jesus. We see this before the birth of the Church in John 20:19 and after the birth of the Church in Acts 20:7 and 1 Corinthians 16:2. Christians worship on Sunday as it is our day of holiness and rest and is set aside for God. It is thought that we worship on Sunday because Jesus rose on Sunday and to honor His resurrection, early Jewish believers in Jesus changed the day of worship to Sunday. Sunday became our Sabbath even though technically Sabbath is still Saturday.
The word Sabbath is a noun meaning the Day of Rest, but it is also often used as a verb. “To sabbath” means “to rest.” In Genesis 2, God literally wove into the fabric of Creation the need to rest and cease and reset and commanded that we do so in the Ten Commandments (Exodus 20:8-11, Deuteronomy 5:12-15).
* God made a day of rest in order to create order in a Creation that would eventually be filled with chaos and confusion.
* God set aside a whole day as holy for rest and worship in order to keep His created-ones on track.
* God decreed that we should rest and create balance in our lives otherwise work and the pursuit of material things and all parts of our lives will be unbalanced.
ILLUSTRATION… Brueggemann, "Sabbath," Reverberations of Faith: A Theological Handbook of Old Testament Themes (Westminster John Knox Press, 2002), 180.
Theologian Walter Brueggemann put it this way: "Sabbath provides a visible testimony that God is at the center of life—that human production and consumption take place in a world ordered, blessed, and restrained by the God of all creation."
TRANSITION
Let’s move on from this Biblical idea of Sabbath, but keep in in the back of our minds as we note that in this passage in Luke 6 there are two Sabbaths to which we should pay attention.
A TALE OF TWO SABBATHS
The beginning of Luke 6 covers two Sabbath days. We have one Sabbath Day in verse 1 and then another Sabbath Day in verse 6.
The first Sabbath in verse 1 centers on Jesus and His disciples going somewhere at some point during a Sabbath Day. We don’t know many details about his particular day, but we do know that the disciples were hungry and as they were travelling, they were picking heads of grain and eating them. The Pharisees who were the keepers of the Law saw them picking heads of grain which they thought of as harvesting (farm work) and were upset. The Sabbath is a big deal. We should not forget passages like Numbers 15 which show us that working on the Sabbath was a big deal.
READ NUMBERS 15:32-36 (ESV)
While the people of Israel were in the wilderness, they found a man gathering sticks on the Sabbath day. 33 And those who found him gathering sticks brought him to Moses and Aaron and to all the congregation. 34 They put him in custody, because it had not been made clear what should be done to him. 35 And the LORD said to Moses, “The man shall be put to death; all the congregation shall stone him with stones outside the camp.” 36 And all the congregation brought him outside the camp and stoned him to death with stones, as the LORD commanded Moses.
The message is clear: Keep the Sabbath or die.
We might wonder why the Pharisees were watching Jesus and His disciples, but even to move around on the Sabbath was not advisable and Jesus and the disciples were clearly on the move on this particular day.
CONTENT… Babcock, “Sabbath,” The Lexham Bible Dictionary
There were many traditions in the teachings of the Pharisees that helped to restrict people on the Sabbath so they would not be tempted to break the Sabbath. They are not in the Bible, but are extra rules to help them keep the one rule. The following was prohibited:
* walking farther than 800-900 yards
* drinking outside the camp or home
* drawing water into any vessel or opening a sealed container
* wearing perfume
* assisting an animal to give birth or helping an animal out of a pit
* having sexual relations
* plowing a field
* starting a fire
* riding an animal or a boat or any transportation
The message is clear: Keep the Sabbath or else.
It is amidst these traditional social and religious rules that Jesus and His disciples are walking somewhere and picked a small snack and were verbally attacked. Jesus of Nazareth was gaining a reputation as a godly teacher and the religious leaders could not have Him appearing to disregard the Sabbath. I did some digging and the word translated “lawful” in verse 2 is a word that shows they knew what Jesus and His disciples were doing was not against God’s Law, but was not permitted by their Pharisee traditions. It just wasn’t “permitted.”
In response, Jesus gives an example from the Bible from 1 Samuel 21 where David not only picks up lunch on a Sabbath day, but it is the symbolic bread dedicated to God for the priests. God did not mind apparently since His Son several thousand years later used it as an example to show the Pharisees that their underwear was in a bunch for no good reason.
Jesus then states something in verse 5 that I will mention, but we need to look at the second Sabbath Day before we really understand the implications of what He says. What does Jesus say? Jesus says: “The Son of Man is lord of the Sabbath.” Believe it or not, that is a mic drop moment.
The second Sabbath in verse 6 centers on Jesus teaching in a synagogue and a miraculous healing that takes place. We should not forget that the primary activity that Jesus did during His ministry was preach and teach. The Gospels tell us this:
READ MATTHEW 4:17 (ESV)
“From that time Jesus began to preach saying, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.”
READ MARK 2:2 (ESV)
“And many were gathered together, so that there was no more room, not even at the door. And He was preaching the Word to them.”
READ LUKE 4:43 (ESV)
“I must preach the good news of the Kingdom of God to the other towns as well; for I was sent for this purpose.”
Jesus is doing His God-given purpose on a Sabbath day and the Pharisees in the crowd were only half listening. I say they were half listening because they were listening to try and catch Him saying something wrong rather than listening to hear the voice of God. Jesus was known for healing and they were looking to see if He would heal on the Sabbath. The Pharisees were hoping for a careless word or a miracle on the Day of Rest so they could accuse Jesus and hopefully get rid of Him.
I find this situation strange. I think it is a set-up. The Pharisees are there watching. Verse 7 tells us that they were specifically looking to see if He would heal on the Sabbath. And there just so happens to be a man with a shriveled hand there? I think the disabled man is planted there to see if the compassionate heart of Jesus would do something. That is my opinion only for we do not know such details.
Jesus knows what is going on with the Pharisees (verse 8) and He took the initiative and calls the man up in front of everyone. We should note that the fellow was not in danger of dying and the healing could have been done the next day or the day after or any other time, but Jesus is acting out what He already stated in His mic drop moment in 6:5. Jesus wanted to make a point.
Jesus wants to do good to a human being in need and it is obvious to Jesus the Son of God that this is not something God the Father would find sinful. He is trying to explain to all gathered there that good is permitted on a holy day. The Gospel of Luke does not tell us that the man actually asked for healing or that he even had faith in Jesus. Jesus tells him to stretch out his hand and one moment his hand was “shriveled” and atrophied and useless for him and the next moment the hand is workable and healed.
There is a phrase my dad used when I was growing up: “so mad I can’t even see straight.” That phrase is a good description of what the word “fury” means in verse 11. They were so angry that their anger led to senselessness or madness to the point that they were not thinking clearly and were willing to do something foolish. Perhaps you have had such a feeling in your life.
TRANSITION
Now we need to come back to verse 5. Now we need to come back to the mic drop statement that is in the middle of these two stories about Jesus on the Sabbath. What are we to take from this passage?
LORD OF THE SABBATH
We could learn several truths from this passage:
* Extra rules sometimes hurt us rather than helps us
* It is always permissible to do good
* It is always permissible to avoid doing evil
Those would be the truths that are on the surface of the passage and are true, but are not really what Luke 6:1-11 is about. Luke 6:1-11 is about what Jesus says in verse 5 and what He says has far reaching implications for you and me who believe that Jesus is the Son of God and is the King of Kings and the Lord of Lords. Lord of Lords.
Jesus Christ states in Luke 6:5 that He is “Lord of the Sabbath.” The word “lord” clues us in that Jesus is speaking about authority… His authority. The God of the Universe created the Sabbath Day at the end of all His creative activities in Genesis to bring order to Creation and for our benefit. The God of the Universe wove into life the need for rest and worship. The God of the Universe set down order amidst the chaos. Jesus says He is the authority over all that. Over all what? Basically… over the fabric of all Creation for He is the Lord of Lords. Jesus is the Son of God and is the King of Kings and the Lord of Lords and is greater than all that has been created because He is the Creator (John 1:3, Hebrews 1:10). Jesus is the ultimate authority in all things.
TRANSITION
Now, here is where this gets difficult. We immediately wonder what sorts of things Jesus has authority over when it comes to us and creation and society and morals and all that stuff. We wonder… is He really Lord over… everything?
The message is clear: Jesus is l-a-w-d of all.
APPLICATION
How does this apply to us? The message is clear: Jesus is l-a-w-d of all.
Thinking back to the beginning of our sermon time, Jesus is Lord over our mouths (James 3:1-12). That we should be mindful of how we use His Name. Yes, typing OMG or saying “Oh my God” is using the Lord’s Name in vain the same way TGIF, good lord, and lordy lordy look whose 40 degrades God’s Name. It matters what we say to people, how we talk about others, and what we joke about. Yes, Jesus is Lord over our mouths and He has expectations of His people.
Jesus is Lord over us when it comes to politics (Romans 13:1-8, 1 Timothy 2:1-2). This next year (2024) we have elections coming up. Yes, yes, yes, it matters how you vote. Politics is not an area where God is hands-off, but Jesus is Lord of All and that means He is Lord of how you vote, what you vote for, and what you vote against. Yes, Jesus is Lord over us in politics and He has expectations of His people.
Jesus is Lord over our finances. It matters to God if we set Him aside to chase money and a better job or a fatter paycheck at the expense of resting on Sundays, cutting out holier priorities, and not tithing to Him first (1 Corinthians 16:1-4). Tithing and giving is a direct response to the lordship of Jesus Christ. We give tithes (10%) and offerings (% more we have prayed about) because giving keeps money under the authority of Christ and in its proper place. Yes, Jesus is Lord over our money and jobs and investments and He has expectations of His people.
Jesus is Lord over our bodies and our sexuality. It matters what we do with our flesh and we are not our own for we were bought with a price and we should glorify God with our bodies (1 Corinthians 6:12-20). It matters who you have sex with and how you view gender and sexuality. The flesh can lead us astray when it comes to bodies and sex. Yes, Jesus is Lord over our gender identity and sexuality and He has expectations of His people.
Basically, you can take your pick of any social issue, moral question, political conversation, community problem, personal opinion, manner in which time is spent, or theory about life and as believers in Jesus Christ we must consult Him first to see what He says. Why?
* He is Lord of Lords.
* He is Lord over the fabric of Creation.
* He is Lord over peace and order and right living.
* He is Lord over the holy and unholy things of life on this Earth.
* He is our Lord.
ENCOURAGEMENT
I want to encourage you today, if you are a believer in Jesus, to lean into your faith and redouble your efforts to keep Jesus as not only Savior, but also L-a-w-d. He is Lord of the Sabbath and Lord of Lords which makes Him Lord of All. He has the way. He authored the truth. He is life.
INVITATION
PRAYER
