Wednesday Night, June 24, 2020 PM

Christ’s Ministry in Early Luke and the Setting of Luke 6

Of Jesus Christ has been established, how he has been doing miracles of compassion, miracles that are signs of who he is as the Son of Man, as the Messiah, as the Savior, that he really is who the angels said he would be, as we, the very early chapters in Luke, that he is as his forerunner, described him as John the Baptist preached, so we find Christ to be in these stories in early Luke.

We find Christ establishing his ministry, his priorities in preaching the gospel, and then his calling of the disciples, as he's calling his disciples to follow him and the things that pertain to their leaving all and following him, whether it be the fishermen or the tax collector, and then, of course, the fallout with the religious leaders, even those in his own hometown, but also those in other places as well.

And then we come to Luke chapter six, and we see kind of a combination of all these things. Here we have Jesus with his disciples, and he'll be doing a miracle, and there's fallout with the religious leaders, and so we have this tying together of all the themes that we've seen thus far.

The Sabbath Controversy in Luke 6

So let me read for us Luke chapter six, verses one through 11. Now, it happened that he was passing through some grain fields on a Sabbath, and his disciples were picking the heads of grain, rubbing them in their hands, and eating the grain.

But some of the Pharisees said, why do you do what is not lawful on the Sabbath? And Jesus, answering them, said, have you not even 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 consecrated bread, which is not lawful for any to eat, except the priests alone, and gave it to his companions. And he was saying to them, the son of man is Lord of the Sabbath.

On another Sabbath, he entered the synagogue and was teaching, and there was a man there whose right hand was withered. The scribes and the Pharisees were watching him closely to see if he healed on the Sabbath, so that they might find reason to accuse him.

But he knew what they were thinking, and he said to the man with the withered hand, get up and come forward. And he got up and came forward. And Jesus said to them, I ask you, is it lawful to do good or to do harm on the Sabbath, to save a life or to destroy it?

After looking around at them all, he said to him, stretch out your hand. And he did so, and his hand was restored. But they themselves were filled with rage and discussed together what they might do to Jesus.

And he was saying to them, verse five, the son of man is Lord of the Sabbath, Lord of the Sabbath. We think about the term Sabbath. I wonder if we recognize that as a message for our times, a needful word for our days.

When you think of the word Sabbath, what other words go with it in your mind? Saboteur, rest. Sabbath and rest go together, don't they? Because Jesus himself makes that connection as he teaches here in Luke six and in Matthew 11 and 12.

But what is the fourth commandment? Remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy. And then there's a following explanation both in Exodus 20 and in Deuteronomy five that says in order to remember the Sabbath day, remember two different things.

In Exodus 20, it says, remember that God created the world in six days and he rested on the seventh day. Remember that, remember the Sabbath day, and remember this, that this is the order that God established in creation.

And then in Deuteronomy five, when it says remember, it says something else. It says, remember that you are a slave in Egypt, but that God brought you up out of Egypt by his many wonders and signs, the plagues, and brought you into the wilderness to bring you to a promised land.

So remember the Sabbath day and keep it holy. And how are they to keep it holy? They were to make it different than the other days. They were to set it apart. It was not to be seen as a common day, but it was to be a set apart day, one in which they did not do their common labor.

One of the first ways this was distinguished in the wilderness was that they would not go out and collect manna on the seventh day, on Saturday. They would not go out and collect manna. In fact, no manna would fall on that day.

Double the amount would fall on Friday, the sixth day, and they would gather as much as they needed and they would have enough for the next day. To stress the point to the Israelites, Moses even told them, don't even come out of your tents.

And yet some still did, looking for the manna, and it's like, as he always did with everything he instructed the Israelites, there were always those who were rebelling and not following the instructions.

But then you also have the story about the man who was found working and collecting sticks and so on on the Sabbath and then they stoned him to death. So to remember the Sabbath day and to keep it holy is to remember what the Sabbath is about, both in terms of the created order in which God was glorified on the seventh day, resting and enjoying the work that he surveyed.

In fact, in Exodus, I don't know which chapter it is, is it 32 or 16?

I don't remember.

It says that the Lord, when he rested on the seventh day, that he nephash, which is the Hebrew word for soul, but it's turned into a verb, and that, so basically that the Lord was refreshed in and of himself on that day.

And whatever the Lord did, that's what we're supposed to do in the Lord. We're supposed to be refreshed in the Lord. And this was what the Sabbath was for. Sabbath, as Jesus says in Matthew 12, the Sabbath was made for man and not man for the Sabbath.

And so this incident happens on the Sabbath. The Sabbath was created by God as a day of rest. He said to give a tithe of all your increase, a tenth of all that you receive into your household, your flocks, your grain, whatever your income was, give a tenth to God, but your time, a whole seventh, a whole seventh to God, one in seven.

So this is the background of the Sabbath. Remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy. Now, the question in the text is, was Jesus remembering the Sabbath day and keeping it holy? Or was he breaking the law?

Were his disciples remembering the Sabbath day and keeping it holy? Or were they breaking the law? This is the incident on the Sabbath in verse one. Now, it happened that when he was passing through some grain fields on a Sabbath and his disciples were picking the heads of grain, rubbing them in their hands and eating the grain.

So what are they doing? They're coming through somebody's field and they're just grabbing grain as they go, rubbing it and then getting the husks off the kernels of grain and then popping the kernels of grain in their mouth and chewing on those, trying to get a little sustenance.

It's quite a contrast from the feasting they just had with Matthew in Matthew's house. And perhaps think about the contrast from Matthew's point of view.

He just was called to follow Jesus.

And he has Jesus and his followers over to his house and he throws them the biggest feast of the year and they all have this wonderful time. And now they're traveling about and they're gleaning with the poor.

This was the provision that God made in his law, Deuteronomy 23, 24 through 25. It says, when you enter your neighbor's vineyard, you may then eat grapes until you're fully satisfied, but you shall not put any in your basket.

And when you enter your neighbor's standing grain, you may then pluck the heads with your hand, but you shall not wield a sickle in your neighbor's standing grain. Meaning that as you pass through your neighbor's fields and vineyards, you can take a little to satiate your hunger, but you're not allowed to go harvest his stuff.

Okay, so that was the law. So they're not breaking the law by taking these heads of grain as they move along. As you think about the incident with Matthew, he's offering them a meal because it was mealtime, their need was obvious.

Here, the need is obvious, they're hungry, they're passing through past this grain and it is Sabbath, but they're grabbing some to feed themselves. So both occasions we see were necessary occasions, but both brought about accusatory questions by the Pharisees.

They see them feasting with Matthew and they say, why don't you all fast like we do? You know, there's something wrong with you. Here, they're just grabbing this grain as they go past and they say, why do you do what is not lawful.

On the Sabbath?

The only way to remember anything that they've heard in their studies or read in their studies is about the laws of the Pharisees, the rabbinical laws regarding Sabbath keeping. No food preparation, which is kind of what they're getting at here, right?

A little bit of food preparation going on, even though it's pretty mild. They were concerned about that. Don't prepare food on the Sabbath. No walking. Yeah, there was a limit on your walking. You could only go 2 ,000 cubits, 3 ,000 feet.

I mean, how do you measure that? It's a little over half a mile. If you go over 3 ,000 feet, you've broken the law as far as the rabbis were concerned.

Yep.

But it was 3 ,000 feet from your home, 2 ,000 cubits from your home. And then they defined your home as a place where you left your personal belongings. So, if you had to go, let's say, to Damascus on Friday, and you were gonna come home on the Sabbath, along the way on Friday, you could leave your toothbrush and your favorite pillow and your cat, so that when you came back, you were never more than 2 ,000 cubits from home.

Worked out well. Also, you weren't allowed to visit your fields. You weren't allowed to visit your vineyards, your gardens, or anything like that on the Sabbath day, because if you did, you were checking on your produce.

You were checking on your work. So you couldn't even go into your gardens or your fields on the Sabbath day. Well, Jesus is a disciple in somebody else's fields. They're not in their own fields, so that's not a problem.

This one's very interesting. This is from chapter 20, paragraph two of the Mishnah on the Shabbat. A person who levels crevices in the ground, makes furrows in the ground, or makes indentions in the ground, is liable for plowing.

Ooh.

If you make some scuff marks in the ground, you're guilty of plowing. For this reason, it is forbidden to defecate in a field when it is lying fallow, lest one come to level crevices. A person who has mud on his feet may clean it off on a wall or on a beam, but not on the ground, lest he level crevices.

A person should not spit on the ground and wipe it with his feet, lest crevices be leveled. It is, however, permitted to step on spittle that is lying on the ground as one walks without having any specific intent.

Yeah.

Keep everything straight, right? And now we come to the violation of Jesus's disciples about hand harvesting. This is from the Babylonian Talmud. He that rubs ears of corn, or grain, on the evening of the Sabbath may blow them from hand to hand on the morrow and eat.

But you can't do both on the same day. And they're breaking that regulation. What are they up to? Why are these rabbis and these Pharisees making these extra regulations? Now, God said, remember the Sabbath day and keep it holy.

Should, in six days, you do your work, on the seventh day, you rest. Did he mean this kind of rest? No, but what are they up to? Well, what they're practicing is, as they say, building a fence around Torah, building a fence around the law, and meaning that we don't wanna break the law, so we're going to make regulations that go around the law, so that we don't even get close to breaking the law.

And they have, there's a passage in Deuteronomy 22a, which says, when you build a new house, you shall make a parapet for your roof, so that you will not bring blood guilt on your house if anyone falls from it.

The rabbis took that passage and made application to the law itself. They called it kumra, that you would build kumra, and this would keep the Jews from blood guiltiness before God, because they would build a parapet, or a fence, around the law, and they wouldn't ever break it.

They would never go over the edge and break the law. If they had a fence, they were keeping them from it. But then, you know, the fence, and then the fence, and then it just keeps on getting backed up, and more fence.

Their goal was the purity of the nation. They wanted to have a pure nation. They wanted to merit God's favor due to their strict adherence to the law. You have to understand their perspective. Think about the impact of the exile.

They were taken away from their land. The temple was destroyed. Jerusalem was destroyed. And think of the fervency of Ezra and Nehemiah in their return, how they refused to allow any idolatry in the city, how they refused to make alliances with the foreigners, with the pagans in the land.

And this eventually, as the Jews lived under the Medes and Persians for a time, eventually won their independence from the Greeks, from the Seleucid Empire under the dynasty of the Maccabeans. They had autonomous rule as the Jews for about 100 years.

And then around 64 BC, they came under the governance of the Romans. So just about 100 years ago at this point, they used to be on their own, autonomous, and now they're under the thumb of the Roman oppressors.

And they believe that the way to get rid of these oppressors is through strict adherence to these virtues. And they do it very publicly. And they believe that if they stir everyone around them to think, feel, speak, and act according to their same virtues by following all these extra regulations, then they will be delivered from their oppression.

That will be delivered from the oppressors as long as we all think and act and do all these things the same way. This is very tiresome. It's a sad bit of humor that for those who are so intent on Sabbath-keeping, they can never rest.

That's the sad irony of it. And Jesus wants to address this. And so here's the answer from the lawgiver. So we have this question of lawfulness. Was he breaking the law? Were his disciples breaking the law?

And he gives an answer. Here is his answer, verse three. Jesus answering said to them, have you not even 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 consecrated bread, which is not lawful for any to eat except for the priests alone, and gave it to his companions.

So he tells them the story about David. And I think he's smiling when he says, have you never even read? These Pharisees read a lot. They read a lot. But what they would do is they would read the text, they'd read the scripture so that they could read about what the rabbi said about that and what the rabbi said about the rabbi who said about that.

And they're not really reading the text for what it is. And so, have you never even really read this passage? It's an excellent story that Jesus refers to. Remember the context. Remember, why was David eating the bread of the presence?

Why was he eating the show bread of the tabernacle? Why would he do that? David was on the run. Starving, yeah, he's on the run. Who's he running from?

Saul.

What problem does Saul have with David? What's his deal? Why doesn't he like David? David played the harp for him. David killed the bad dudes for him. David married to his daughter. Why is Saul so mad at David?

He's jealous because David is the next king. And it's obvious. So this is a very fitting story for Jesus to tell. He's just told a lot of illustrations about the old versus the new, and how there is no happy synthesis between the old and the new, but the new replaces the old.

And here are the vanguards of the old angry at the new. The tenants of the vineyard look upon the son as he comes to collect what is owed him, and they're ready to kill him. Because they don't want to give up what they believe is theirs and theirs alone.

The whole dynamic of jealousy between Saul and David in the Old Testament is a very good analogy for what was going on in the passage from the old to the new covenant, with the Pharisees and the scribes ready to kill Jesus, but he was the anointed one.

He was the fulfillment of it, but they were opposing him. So it's a very fitting illustration that Jesus tells. David and those with him were on the run from Saul, and they needed some food. Here's Jesus and his disciples, they're hungry, and it's on the Sabbath, and they're grabbing some grain.

So Jesus is saying, so are you accusing David of doing what is unlawful? Are you accusing David's men of doing what is unlawful? Why did the Pharisees, why did the scribes have no problem with David and his followers for what they did, but they're pointing why?

Because they had such high regard for David, right? David was the one who brought the Ark of the Covenant into Jerusalem. David was the one who led the people in the worship of God. David was the anointed one.

They had high regard for David, and so what David is up to, as he's being persecuted by Saul, and he had these men with him, they don't have a problem with that, but someone greater than David is here.

Someone greater than David is here, Jesus and his disciples, is the point. So Jesus is not bringing up the story to say, well, David broke the law, so it's okay for me too. That's not what he was saying.

And in fact, the situation is one of relationship. Sabbath, Jesus is showing, Sabbath is about who you're with far more than what you refrain from doing. Why are the disciples not breaking Sabbath? Because they're with Jesus.

In Matthew's account, he goes on to tell the story, he tells the analogy of like, oh, have you never read about how the priests in the temple work and labor on the Sabbath, sacrificing animals, which is hard work when you're slaughtering animals and butchering them, that's hard work.

Why are they not accused of breaking the Sabbath, why? Because they're in the temple grounds, so it's okay. He says, they're with me, so it's okay. How can they be breaking Sabbath? They're with me, he's the Lord of the Sabbath.

How could they possibly break Sabbath? They're with Jesus, that's not possible. And that's the point he's making. If you do not gather with the saints to commune with Christ, if you do not abide with Christ, how can you Sabbath?

If you gather and you isolate to show everyone how well you Sabbath, is that actually resting in Christ? We are to rest in Christ. We can do that very easily in our prayers, to confess our place in Christ, our praise to Christ, finding in him our righteousness, our acceptance with God, our provision of forgiveness, our Lord and Savior.

And Jesus says in verse five, the statement of dominion over the whole matter, the Son of Man is Lord of the Sabbath. It's an interesting thing that in the book of Joshua, the day on which the walls came tumbling down was the seventh day, it's the Sabbath.

That was the day that the walls came tumbling down. That was the day that they walked around Jericho seven times instead of just one time. That was the day that they pursued and killed and conquered on the Sabbath.

What do the rabbis have to say about that? Well, they said, this is the rabbi's point of view. The day on which Jericho was taken was the Sabbath day and that though they slew and burnt on the Sabbath day, he that commanded the observation of the Sabbath commanded the profanation of it.

They said, it's up to God. God was in charge of the Sabbath so he could say what they were supposed to do on the Sabbath. And Jesus was saying, the Son of Man is Lord of the Sabbath so you shouldn't have any issues with what my disciples and I are doing.

So this is the situation that the Pharisees are in. How could the Pharisees Sabbath without reference to the Lord of the Sabbath? What was it that they were supposed to remember on the Sabbath day? But how the Lord created everything in six days and rested on the seventh.

How are they to remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy if they didn't remember that it was the Lord who redeemed them and rescued them up out of Egypt? How could they possibly Sabbath if they were rejecting the Lord of the Sabbath?

And that's really the greater question. There is no rest for those harried by the whip of guilt. Am I Sabbathing well enough? There is no rest for those harried by shame and the fear of men. But there is rest for those weary and heavy laden who will come to Christ and find him to be their righteousness and their peace.

We are to be resting in Christ. So we'll leave it there and come to the next portion, our next opportunity. Do we have any prayer requests this evening?