Did Jesus break the Sabbath?

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I've asked you to open them again, Mark chapter two.
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And tonight we will be completing Mark chapter two and going into Mark chapter three.
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So our study is going to be from chapter two, verse 23, to chapter three, verse six.
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And I want to preface tonight's lesson by saying, so far I've been taking smaller sections, but I'm doing a broader section tonight because the theme of both of these passages is the subject of the Sabbath.
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And therefore I felt like it would be good to cover this all at one time.
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But there are a few things that we will only likely touch on tonight.
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And one of them specifically deals with an event in the life of David.
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And I talked to Brother Mike about this because as you know, he is teaching through First Samuel on Sunday morning in Sunday school.
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And I said, you know, there are some aspects of that that he's going to cover in that.
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And so if you haven't been coming to Sunday school, it might be a time to start.
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But also if you do have questions about tonight, if you feel like I'm doing it only a cursory, just understand that I'm happy to answer anything as best I can.
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But I do want to say, I do think there are some difficulties in tonight's passage.
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I mentioned this in my prayer just a moment ago.
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I do think that there are some aspects of this text that we have to wrestle with.
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And we may come to a few conclusions that may differ.
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And so long as those conclusions don't lead us into any type of heresy, I think that that's fine.
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Having a little difference of understanding is sometimes okay, as long as again, we are being faithful to our understanding of the text.
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And because when we talk about a subject as volatile as the Sabbath, when I say volatile, it does divide people, it divides denominations, it divides friends, when honestly often it shouldn't, but it does.
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And so that's all just a preface to tonight.
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Like I said, this is a very heavy duty subject.
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And I do kind of looking like they're gonna miss a big chunk moving forward, but they can always watch it later if they feel like they need to go back and catch up, because I do want us to continue to move forward.
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My goal is to finish the Gospel, Mark, at some point.
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And if we continue to go one or two verses at a time, we'll never get done.
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So let's read.
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We're going to read Mark chapter two.
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And there are parallel passages.
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And I have been, as you remember, hopefully from the last couple of weeks, I have been asking you all to read the parallel passages.
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I'm gonna hold off on that tonight, if we have time, we'll read the parallel passages, because there's so much that we're gonna be looking at.
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But we'll see how time allows for us.
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But I will give you those parallel passages if you want to have them.
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And what's interesting is Mark breaks the chapter between chapter two and three, but these events in Matthew's Gospel and in Luke's Gospel are both in the same chapter.
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So in Matthew's Gospel, it is Matthew chapter 12, verses one to 14.
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And in Luke's Gospel, it is Luke chapter six, verses one to 11.
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But, and the story goes the same way.
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You have two Sabbath issues back to back.
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First is Jesus and the disciples in the grain field, and then second is Jesus healing the man with a withered hand.
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And so all three Synoptic Gospels tell the same story, some with a little bit more information as we've seen over the last few weeks, but it's all in the same order.
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Mark is the only one where there's a chapter division between the two stories.
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So again, I feel like it's all one idea.
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So it says in Mark chapter two, verse 23, one Sabbath, he was going through the grain fields, and as they made their way, his disciples began to pluck heads of grain.
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And 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 was hungry? He and those who were with him, how he entered the house of God in the time of Abiathar, the high priest, and ate the bread of the presence, which is not lawful for any but the priest to eat, and also gave it to those who were with him.
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And he said to them, the Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath.
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So the son of man is Lord, even of the Sabbath.
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Chapter three, verse one.
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Again, he entered the synagogue.
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The man was there with a withered hand, and they watched Jesus to see whether he would heal him on the Sabbath so that they might accuse him.
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And he said to the man with the withered hand, come here, and he said to them, is it lawful on the Sabbath to do good or to do harm, to save life or to kill? But they were silent.
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And he looked around at them with anger, grieved at their hardness of heart, and said to the man, stretch out your hand.
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He stretched it out, and his hand was restored.
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The Pharisees went out and immediately held counsel with the Herodians against him how to destroy him.
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Father, I pray now that as we take this opportunity to study your word, that you would keep me from error or wisdom as I teach, to say only what your scripture says and not my own vain opinions.
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And I pray, Lord, that you would be glorified, your people would be admonished, and that they would be instructed.
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And, Lord, that we all might seek to be presented mature in Christ.
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I pray this in Jesus' name.
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Amen.
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The last few weeks, I had given you an outline of chapter two that I want to remind you of.
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We said that in chapter two, what we have is Jesus beginning to have his opposition show itself because of four specific things that Jesus did.
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Does anybody remember what the first thing was? I've done this each week, so I'm hoping maybe someone will remember.
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He forgave sin.
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He forgave sin, that's right.
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So, Jesus forgives sin.
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And what was their reason for taking issue with that? Friends of sinners.
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No, no, that's not true, you're right.
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But just speaking of number one, what was their issue with him forgiving sin? They said only God can forgive sin.
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Only God can forgive sin.
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What did we say? That's true.
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Jesus having a divine prerogative can do that only because he is, in fact, God in the flesh.
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Now, you're right, he friended sinners.
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And that was the second thing, Stephen.
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And what was their issue with that? Okay, thought they were unclean.
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Well, primarily because they didn't think they were sinners.
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They saw themselves as the righteous, which is why I think Jesus makes that point out of the income for the righteous, and in that sense, self-righteous, but for sinners, to call sinners to repentance.
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They saw themselves in a different qualitative category.
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They saw them as tax collectors and sinners, and they saw themselves to be counted among the righteous.
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So, Jesus is hanging out with the wrong people.
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Jesus should be hanging out with us, not them.
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But they didn't want Jesus to hang out with them.
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That wasn't the point.
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The point was Jesus, to them, showing himself a false teacher by spending time with sinners.
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The third thing was Jesus did what? Did not fast.
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Yep, he did not fast.
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And neither him or his apostles kept the weekly fast.
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And remember we said last time there were two fasts that were held during the week that were not required by scripture.
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Scripture only indicates one fast, and it was an annual fast, which was held on the day of atonement.
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So, the Pharisees, and we're gonna see tonight the almost unlimited range of the Pharisees adding the rules.
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We're gonna really talk about that tonight.
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But they had added rules regarding fasting, and so they said, John's disciples fast, and our disciples fast, but your disciples don't fast.
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And the obvious inference there, or implication, is that your disciples are not very dedicated.
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Your disciples are not doing what's right, because our disciples do what's right.
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And he's calling into question Jesus' integrity as a teacher and his disciples' integrity as followers.
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So, now we come to the fourth thing, which as I said leads into the next chapter, and that is the keeping of the Sabbath.
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And what's interesting about this one is that it stands in a qualitative distinction from the other ones.
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Well, we can say the first one could be blasphemy if someone says that they have the power to forgive sins, but don't, so there could be a blasphemy sin here.
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But being around sinners, again, that wasn't something that was necessarily forbidden in the law, so this is not a legal issue.
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This is more of a social, moral issue from the Pharisees' perspective, but not necessarily a legal, biblical issue.
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And the fasting was a traditional issue.
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But when we come to the subject of the keeping of the Sabbath we find ourselves in a new qualitative category.
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You may want to take a stab as to why.
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It's part of not only the law, it's part of the Ten Commandments, right? It's part of the Decalogue, which is sometimes referred to as the Ten Words, right? If we go to Exodus chapter 20, we find that God, when he speaks to Moses, he writes ten things in stone.
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Have no other gods before the Lord, not make any idols, and not take the Lord's name in vain.
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Remember the Sabbath to keep it holy.
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Then he goes on to give the other commandments.
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Your father and mother do not commit murder, do not commit adultery, do not steal, do not buy, do not covet.
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But the one that is in view here is the Sabbath and Jesus is being accused of being a Sabbath breaker.
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Now, I want to address that from a simple perspective, and that is asking this very simple question.
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Would it matter if Jesus broke the Sabbath? I think you think it's a trick question, and I promise you it's not.
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Well, it would matter because he kept all of the law.
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That's right.
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It would matter if Jesus broke the Sabbath in the sense of breaking the law of God.
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Now, how do we define sin according to the New Testament? Violating God's law.
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It's lawlessness.
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First John tells us that.
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Sin is the breaching of God's law.
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Sin is lawlessness, right? So, how do we define sin? We define sin by the law of God.
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How do we define breaking the law? We define breaking the law as sin because God's law is how we define what sin is.
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That's the mark.
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If it's missed, then we've sinned.
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That's what sin means, to miss a mark.
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So, this is not a small issue.
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If Jesus broke the law, then he is disqualified from being the Savior because he had to be sinless to receive in himself the sins of others.
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This is, again, I hope you don't think I'm belaboring an unnecessary point.
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This is the whole point that cannot be missed because there are people, very, very common teaching today that Jesus broke the law and that it wasn't a big deal.
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There's a man up in the Carolinas, got one of the biggest churches in the United States, and he is very well known for having said, Steve, that's what I'm talking about, because he just smiled.
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He's very, very famous for having said, Jesus broke the law for love.
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That's a statement that he made from the pulpit that Jesus broke the law for love.
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And, again, my issue with that is not that Jesus does not love.
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I certainly agree that Jesus does love, but the issue is, did Jesus break the law? This man says that he did.
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And, again, I can't help but belabor the point.
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If you believe Jesus broke the law at any point in his life, then you end up with a Savior who cannot save.
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Now, earlier in this series, Mark, I asked the question, could Jesus have sinned? And I said, I don't believe that he could have.
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We already did a whole lesson on what I consider the impeccability of Christ.
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That's a somewhat debated question, only because that question is a question of possibility.
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Is it possible? We debate that, even though I think it's impossible.
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That's a debated question.
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But the question from Scripture, did he sin? The answer has to be no.
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I mean, Hebrews tells us.
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He did not sin, Peter tells us, without sin, right? And, again, he said, why are you laboring this? Because if you read this, some might come away concluding that Jesus' attitude toward the law was cavalier, and that his response to the Pharisees was, I can break the law if I want, because I'm the Lord.
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But I don't believe that's the right reading of the text.
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You understand that that is how some people could conclude from this text, that Jesus basically says, I'm the Lord, I can do what I want.
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And in one sense, it is true that Christ is the Lord and can do what he wills, but he says that his will is to do the will of him who sent him.
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And it says he always did the will of the Father.
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And so it's important that we not assume upon this text, Jesus broke the law.
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Again, I hope you don't feel like I'm over-belaboring this.
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This is to the very heart of who Jesus is.
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So with that in mind, let's walk through the text and see what it says.
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It says, one Sabbath, he was going through the grain fields, and as they made their way, his disciples began to pluck heads of grain.
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Now, this is something that I'm not super familiar with as far as I'm not a farm boy.
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So I don't know what this would have looked like from a physical perspective, but from what I understand, you can pluck the heads of grain, rub it in your hands, and the bark on the outside would fall off and you would end up with something that could be eaten.
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And I assume it would be, again, I may be wrong about this, so forgive me.
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I assume it's something like a granola kind of feel.
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And I mean, it's grain, right? You're eating grain.
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These men are hungry, so they reach out to a, and again, I'm not saying granola like in a nature zone or something like that.
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But what I mean is it's edible, it's filling, it satisfies their need.
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They're walking through the grain field, which right away just needs to be understood that when we talk about the Sabbath, there were all kinds of restrictions that the Pharisees had regarding the Sabbath.
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And one of the restrictions that they had was how far one could walk.
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If you look at the extra biblical writings that were used among the Jewish people, they had things in place as far as like how much could be carried.
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Like for instance, if you could carry something in one hand, but you couldn't carry it in two hands because that would be considered too heavy, things like that.
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And they had a certain law about how far you could walk.
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Now, I've heard this from a couple of different sources, but I don't know the exact place to find it.
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But from what I understand, it was 1,999 steps.
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It was how many steps you could take on a Sabbath.
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And I may be getting that number a little off, but there was a certain point where if you went that extra step, that 2,000th step, that you would be violating the Sabbath.
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And so you can imagine Jesus' disciples are cruising through the grain fields, probably not going one, two, three, four, you know, discerning how many steps.
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They're probably just walking with Christ in the grain fields, not really concerned with this rule of steps.
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So right away, we see in verse 23, not only are they plucking heads of grain, which would have been a violation according to the Pharisees, but they're also taking a leisurely stroll, which would have been a violation of their rules.
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But I want you to, for a moment, and again, I know we're gonna look at one verse, but for a moment, I want you to ask yourself this question.
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Does what they're doing violate God's law? Because that's the big question.
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Is what they're doing violating God's law? And my answer, go ahead, Lee, you wanna say something? Not according to Deuteronomy 23, 25.
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That's exactly, it's right here printed in my notes.
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Look at you, what does it say, brother? Go ahead and read it for me.
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When you come into your neighbor's standing grain, you may pluck the heads with your hand, but you shall not use a sickle on your neighbor's standing grain.
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Yeah, so what that's saying, at least as far as I understand it, I think you and I would probably agree, that if you were in your neighbor's grain, you may take some with your hand, but you're not allowed to come in and plow.
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You're not allowed to come in with a sickle and start filling up your wheelbarrow or whatever it is, because that would be an act of theft.
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You would be harvesting someone else's food.
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But just like if someone has on their property an apple tree and the apple tree's full of apples and a person walks by and they reach up and pluck an apple, one might consider that theft, but it really wouldn't be theft.
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It's there and it's available.
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But if they came with a bucket and they started pulling all the apples off of the tree and then they went and dumped out the bucket and brought it back and pulled the rest of the apple, then that would be wrong and it would be considered theft.
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So in Deuteronomy, it's making a distinction between harvesting and, and this is gonna sound funny, snacking.
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So we've got the harvest is forbidden, in the sense of, if it's not your land, it's not your property.
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You don't go harvesting what's not yours.
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But if you find yourself in your neighbor's land, and I used to, growing up, one of the things I used to love in our yard, we used to have blackberry bushes out by the ditch.
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And I'd go sit down on the ground and I'd pick those blackberry guys, eat them right off the thing.
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And that's kind of the picture here.
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These guys are in the grain field.
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They pick just enough to satisfy themselves and they're done.
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They have not violated, they've not violated the law in the sense that they haven't stolen because the law makes it perfectly permissible for them to do this.
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And they have not violated by the standard of work because Deuteronomy that you quoted, Deuteronomy 23, 25, clearly distinguishes between this and work because work would be harvesting.
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So that's what needs to be understood right away is in that sense, I think we can make a very reasonable argument that they have not violated God's law.
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But they did violate the rules of the Pharisees.
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They did violate the traditions of the Jewish people because along with the law of God, and by the way, very simple question.
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I think most of you will know this, but just in case there's any question, what is the standard for the Sabbath according to the Old Testament? What is the only thing that the Sabbath says about the Sabbath? It's set apart.
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It's set apart, but that's not quite what I'm asking.
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But that is true, it's holy, but there's something else.
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Yeah, do no work, right? Do no work, that's the only thing.
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The Old Testament doesn't explain how that works.
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The only thing we're given is examples.
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Dude goes out, chops wood on the Sabbath, he is punished severely, his life is taken, but it is obvious that he's doing that having been told not to go out and work, he goes out and works anyway and is punished.
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But aside from that, we're not given standards of what does it mean to work.
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Like for instance, Andy is a consummate fisherman.
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I am not.
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Andy is a lover of fishing.
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I am not one who is good at fishing.
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So to me, fishing would be work because I'm not good at it.
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I would have to go buy stuff just to be able to go.
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But Andy does it as leisure.
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To him, it's enjoyable.
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So the question becomes, well, can Andy fish on the Sabbath because it's, to him, not work, it's leisure.
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And you see how it begins to be argumentative.
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There are people today, and we're gonna talk about this in a moment, we're gonna talk about the different views of the Sabbath on this side of the cross because I do think that there's a distinction, Old Covenant versus New Covenant, we'll talk about that.
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But there are people today who call themselves Sabbath keepers, meaning they believe they keep the Sabbath, whether they do it on Saturday or Sunday, we're gonna talk about the difference.
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But oftentimes, among those groups, there will be different standards.
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Like one that I know particularly, he's a pastor, he's a wonderful man.
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He says, if I come to visit your church, please don't invite me to eat on Sunday because I don't go to restaurants because I believe Sunday's the Sabbath and I don't go to restaurants.
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And I say, okay, that's your conviction, that's fine.
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I have another friend who also believes he keeps the Sabbath, he's a Sabbatarian, is what the term is, and he's fine with going to restaurants.
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He says, I'm not working.
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So to him, the standard's sort of mixed.
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And somebody says, well, that guy's wrong.
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Well, here's the problem, is we get back to the issue of how many steps you take, right? We get back to that question of work and ceasing of work.
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And one of the things that I think is important when we have this conversation is to understand that the Sabbath was meant to be a blessing, not a curse.
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And the Pharisees had made it a curse.
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Yes? I can remember, and some of us can remember when nothing was open on Sunday except like police, hospitals.
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Sure.
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And I think I was about 12 or 13.
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And then at one point, they said, Penny's is gonna be open on Sundays.
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And nobody could believe it, and they were shocked.
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And then as things devolve, Publix is gonna be open on Sunday.
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No way, no way Mr.
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What's-His-Name would let Publix be open on Sunday.
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And so...
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It's funny that you mention that because I remember growing up and Nassau County would sell alcohol on Sunday, but New Ball County wouldn't.
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So there was a liquor store right on the border.
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It was right when you turned to go to our house.
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It was Playbill Liquor.
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And it was always packed on Sunday from people from Jacksonville because they couldn't buy their beer in Jacksonville on Sunday.
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So they would drive up just past the border in Nassau County.
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They'd fill up.
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We remember this, you guys, they'd fill up with their liquor and they'd drive back home.
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And so yes, these, they're called what? Blue Laws? No.
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Is that what it is? Is that what it is, Blue Laws? No.
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That specifically regulate what happens on Sunday.
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But then that goes to another bigger question.
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And again, I don't even know if we're gonna have time to really get to it tonight.
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That's the question of does, is Sunday really a Saturday? Because that's a debate, right? The Seventh-day Adventists would argue it's Saturday.
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So would Messianic Jews would argue it's Saturday, right? So there's a lot of questions that come in this.
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But as I said, not wanting to depart too far from the text, but all that's great and I do wanna get there.
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The big issue for me is this, is Jesus breaking this law? Is he encouraging his disciples to break the law and I don't believe so, I don't believe so.
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Verse 24, it says, and the Pharisees were saying to him, look, why are you doing what is not lawful on a Saturday? See, they say it's not lawful.
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They say you're breaking the law.
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Now you would think, at least I would, and I would never put words in my Savior's mouth, but seems to me like Jesus could make the argument, well, we didn't break the law, we broke your traditions, not the same.
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But that's not the argument that he makes.
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This is where I find the most difficulty in this passage and I would hope to be able to submit to you that I don't have everything figured out all the time.
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And there are times when I read things and I'm trying my best to understand it, but I'm willing to say that my understanding is still being sanctified over time.
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But because Jesus does give a response that seems rather odd to me, because he chooses to go back into the Old Testament scriptures and use the scripture to justify this situation.
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He's quoting here, or he's not quoting, but he's referencing 1 Samuel chapter 21, which is interesting enough.
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Brother Mike will be in next week.
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So it's nice that I can say, if you got a problem with this, go talk to Mike.
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But it says here, it says, and he said to them, have you never read what David did when he was in need and was hungry? He and those who were with him, how he entered the house of God in the time of Abiathar the high priest and ate the bread of the presence, which is not lawful for any, but the priest he also gave to those who were with him.
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Now there's a whole story that goes along with that.
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And the priest says the young men must be holy, not having touched a woman.
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There's a lot that goes into this story that Jesus doesn't mention.
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The most important thing that he does mention here is that there was a bread that wasn't to be eaten by anyone but a priest.
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However, because of necessity, it was allowed to be eaten by the people who were with David.
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Therefore, it would seem as if what Jesus could be saying is that there are times when physical necessity overrides ceremonial conditions.
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That would seem to be what is being said.
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And I think that that's reasonable because we would say the same thing.
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There are times where physical necessity overrides ceremonial conditions.
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And I'll give you a good example.
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The most rigid Sabbatarians I know wouldn't say that hospitals should be closed on Sabbath because they realized that the Sabbath has to continue with people being sick.
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People still get sick.
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People still get into automobile accidents on the Sabbath.
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And therefore, they would say acts of mercy or necessity are allowed on the Sabbath.
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And just about every Sabbatarian I know uses that.
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I think that term is acts of mercy or necessity.
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If the donkey is in the ditch, you don't leave him in the ditch until sundown.
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You pull him out of the ditch and you haven't broken the law by doing so.
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And so some would say that what Jesus is saying is at times of necessity, there can be a breach in ceremony.
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And that would be reasonable.
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But there's also a deeper condition that needs to be considered here.
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And that is who is involved.
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Because Jesus is referring not to just any person, but he's referring to David.
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And I mention that because if a random stranger came to the temple, I don't think that the high priest would have offered him the shulker.
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Now he may have offered him something, but I don't think he would have given him the bread of the presence.
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And I do think David's participation in this event does speak to the allowance.
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The king is here and the king's men have a need.
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Therefore, the king is more important than the ceremony.
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Now, with that, I want you to just consider what Jesus goes on to say when he says, the son of man is the Lord of the Sabbath, right? So I think that there's something to be said for him referencing David and his men.
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Because David and his men are prototypical of Jesus and his men.
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Isn't David, isn't Jesus the son of David? Isn't that his title? And in that sense, I think that there's more to this than simply saying human need necessitates ceremonial setting aside.
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I think there's more to it in what Jesus is saying.
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But as I said, in my own heart, I'm still working through this because my most important thing I want to make sure that you understand that I believe and I don't think the text will allow is that Jesus has sinned.
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And if we come to the first Samuel passage and we come to a conclusion that that priest was wrong in giving the bread to those men, I don't think he was.
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I don't think Jesus would have used an example and he was wrong.
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But let's just say we did.
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It still wouldn't mean Jesus had broke the law.
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And that's the point I'm trying to get across.
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And that's where I think the illustration can be somewhat difficult.
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But it is obvious that Jesus is using this illustration to make the point that what has happened here is not a violation of the law.
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How do we understand how it's not? Whether we use the Deuteronomy passage, which is obviously where I went, where Lee went, I think that's legitimate.
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Or whether we use Jesus' example of David in 1 Samuel 21.
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Either way, he hasn't broken the law.
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He broke the rules, but that's not the same thing.
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There were Pharisee rules that did not make law.
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I always like to use this example.
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When I talk about, people say, what's the difference between rules and laws? I said, well, I carry, most of you know, I carry a firearm most of the time.
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And I cannot carry it in any building that is a government-owned building, such as you can't go to the courthouse with it.
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The reason being is because it's against the law.
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But if I go to Buffalo Wild Wings, as I do like to go get wings sometimes, they have a sign that says no firearms.
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Now, that's not a law, but it is a rule.
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If I violate and go in and break the rules, I'm now trespassing because I violated their rules.
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But you understand the difference between rule and law at that point.
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It's not a law, but they have a rule and they have a right to establish a rule for their building.
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And I'm gonna follow their rules because I don't wanna be trespassing on their property.
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If they don't want me there, I'll go eat at David's.
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I'll go eat at Dick's.
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Or somewhere I'll go get some wings somewhere else.
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But the point of the matter is when they came to Jesus and said, what you're doing is not lawful.
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But what they're saying is you're breaking God's law and I don't believe Jesus was.
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So I'm just, I know I keep stressing that.
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Please understand I'm not trying to be overly repetitive.
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I just think it's important that we understand.
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So getting back to the text, he does make another statement that I think is important and then we're gonna look at chapter three very quickly.
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He says in verse 27, the Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath.
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That one verse has been used by Sabbatarians to try to argue that Sabbath is a universal command for all men because it says the Sabbath was made for man.
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And the phrase there, man, can be translated mankind.
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And in that sense, those who believe the Sabbath is a universal moral command for all men to rest one day out of seven or on the seventh day would argue that verse.
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In fact, when I did my debate, many of you know this, I did a formal debate on the Sabbath back in 2017, 2018.
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I did it with Rob Hamm, Presbyterian minister, lovely brother.
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We had a fun time.
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We weren't angry with one another.
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We just did a formal debate.
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And that was one of the passages that I had to deal with because it does seem to indicate, at least from a personal reading, that Jesus is saying God made the Sabbath for all men.
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And that's the way it's interpreted by Sabbatarians.
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It's the Sabbath is for all men.
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But I think that a similar reading is simply Jesus is making the point that the Sabbath was not meant to be a burden on men, but rather that it was made to bless men.
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And again, they got reading into the text, but that's the point, is the Pharisees had made the Sabbath a burden.
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They had made the Sabbath more than what it was intended to be.
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It was supposed to be for the people of God to have a day of rest.
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And by the way, we thank God for giving us the one day and seven rest.
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And you have to ask this question, where do we get seven days from? Creation.
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We do, we get seven days from creation.
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And God rested on that seventh day of creation and he hallowed the seventh day.
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He made it whole.
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So there is a sense in which this concept of Sabbath goes all the way back to the beginning.
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Now there's debate as to whether or not it was kept before Exodus 16, because the first time it's mentioned being kept is actually in Exodus 16, when the people are coming out of Egypt and God assigns them a rule, do not work.
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That's when we find the guy chopping wood and all that is in the book of Exodus.
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So the point of the matter is, and I think I'm, I guess, time's not gonna allow me to say everything I wanna say.
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I'm thinking I may have to bring this in the next week.
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Because I have so much I wanted to say.
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But go ahead.
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I got the feeling as I read this, so maybe I shouldn't use the word feeling, but.
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This is what you gleaned.
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This is what I gleaned when I was in this field.
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You gleaned it from the thing you said.
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That this, that verse 27 was like putting it into this, this discussion and this, you know, over this with the Pharisees.
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And it was like a benevolent thing.
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You know, the Sabbath was made for man.
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You know, it's like quit arguing.
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It's made for man, not man for the Sabbath.
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We weren't made for, to be this law keep, perfect law keeper.
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We were made to have a rest.
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Yeah, it's a blessing.
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Yeah.
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Yeah, I agree.
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I think that's what he's saying.
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You guys have taken the blessing and you've ruined it.
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With your pedantic over-analysis, with your frustrating rule and legalism.
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And honestly, again, I'm just gonna make this a two-parter.
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Because I do, I have other things.
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I was gonna talk about the four different views of the Sabbath today.
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And there's no way I'm gonna get to that in five minutes.
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Unless you guys want to stay an extra half hour.
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So you guys okay with going another week for chapter three? We'll do that next week? We're good? All right.
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So, so, but let me finish with this.
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Cause I do want to, I want to tag on to what Anne just said.
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I do think that that's the point that Jesus is making.
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My men around here grabbing and eating because they're hungry and they've done nothing wrong.
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You, by your rules, have established unfair burdens.
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And what is one of the things that Jesus does say about the Pharisees? They put burdens on men that they themselves are unwilling to carry.
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Right? That they have overloaded men with burdens.
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The idea of the word burden, I was gonna get to this.
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The idea of burden is actually tied to what the Pharisees taught about the Sabbath.
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Because they often talked in the rules about what constituted a burden.
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You know, you can pick up.
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Yeah, I think it was like, you can pick up one thing, but if you dropped it, you couldn't pick it up again.
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There's all these little rules on that.
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Maybe I'll get the actual, some of the lists and read them next week.
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But there's so many little pedantic things.
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Like if the baby drops its toy, you can pick up the toy.
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But if you pick up the baby with the toy, it's too much because it's too much work.
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It's just all these little ridiculous things.
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Yes.
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Yeah, they argued a long time whether a mother could hold their child on the Sabbath.
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That's definitely, yeah.
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And they said, yeah, she can, as long as he doesn't have something in his hand because that would be work.
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That's it.
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That's right.
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By him holding something, it becomes work.
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And again, I hate to over-compare, but we see the same thing in legalism today.
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The Bible doesn't give us enough rules.
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So we got to make new rules.
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We've got to add rules.
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Just this past week, I saw an interaction between two people online and it was over the subject of alcohol.
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Now, I do not want to get into a debate about drinking alcohol.
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I don't think that would be, but the man who was arguing against any drinking, he was a teetotaler.
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His position was not, there was no grace.
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This is exactly what the word teaches.
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You can't have a drop.
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And if you do have a drop, I mean, it was just very, and I have read and studied, and I have no doubt that this is exactly what it means.
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And if you don't believe what I'm saying, you just don't care what the scripture says.
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That's the attitude of the legalist, is I've got rules and my rules are out of the Bible.
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And I'm sure every Pharisee would have said, all of our rules are based in the Bible.
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That's what people often say.
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They're based in the Bible.
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The question often is, yeah, but you have added, you have added things that it just doesn't say.
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That's the problem.
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The Pharisees had added so much.
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They had mounted upon men's backs, burdens, and they had robbed them of the blessing of the Sabbath.
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So with that, I'm gonna draw to a close.
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Any questions? Yes, I had one.
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And this is, this is to my ignorance.
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I've never really actually researched it.
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But there, to the best of my knowledge, there's no evidence of, in the Bible-wise, from when Jesus, at creation, when God says he rested the seventh day, there's no further talk on that until Exodus.
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All right, Exodus 16 is the first time the Sabbath is mentioned.
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And so, when I did my debate with Rob Hinn, he argued that Sabbath is a creation ordinance that would have been understood by Adam, all the way down through the Exodus, and the people of God already had it.
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Now, he would have said that it wasn't always kept properly, but he would have argued they had it.
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My counter-argument is that we see nothing of it from Genesis 2, all the way to Exodus 16.
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There's never, ever a place where we see Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, or any of them, make reference to the Sabbath.
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Nor is, I mean...
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No, please, please, please, please.
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People will use, when Adam, when they came to offer the sacrifice, people would infer that it was the Sabbath.
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But, think about this.
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The Sabbath was never put upon the Gentiles.
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Just if you wanted to think about it from a creation ordinance, Gentiles would never, I mean, you'd be hard-pressed to find where they were said to have violated the Sabbath.
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That's a very excellent point, Andy.
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Just to add a thought, like I said, we could end up being here all night, because that is, the Gentiles were condemned for so many other things.
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They were condemned for things like child sacrifice and all those things, but they were never condemned for keeping the Sabbath.
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And the Sabbath was the sign that distinguished Israel from the rest of the nations.
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So, yes, I do think that's a very, very vital part of understanding of the Sabbath.
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So, very good thought.
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All right, so, like I said, I wanna look at Hebrews 4 next week and talk about some things.
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We're gonna go into Mark, chapter three.
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Didn't think it was gonna take me so long to get through chapter two tonight, but I'm glad we did.
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Glad we took it kind of slow.
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And I do want, one last thing.
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There is, because I'm not gonna go back into chapter two.
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Next week, we're gonna start chapter three.
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There is a question about why Jesus mentions Abiathar here, because in 1 Samuel, it actually mentions a different priest.
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It was...
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Google it.
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Abimelech is mentioned as the priest, not Abiathar.
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And that leads, again, to some people saying, well, did Jesus not know who the high priest was? And the answer, of course, is of course, Jesus didn't know who the high priest was.
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What Jesus is using is a customary Jewish way of indicating a section of the Old Testament by virtue of who the high priest was during that time, not the specific priest at the moment.
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So during David's life, Abiathar was the high priest.
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And so he says, during the time of Abiathar, the high priest, not that that was the priest in the story.
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And so just to understand, Jesus is not erring.
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He's using a customary Jewish term to refer to that time period.
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So just, obviously, Jesus doesn't make mistakes, especially about Jewish history.
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I think he knows Jewish history.
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He wrote it.
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But at the same time, there are people who question that.
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Why did Jesus say it this way and not another way? He's just using a customary language.
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And just to be clear, in case you, as you're reading through your study Bibles, if you saw that, what you think, we skip over that.
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All right, let's pray.
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Father, I thank you for your word.
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I pray that tonight has been, that we've been faithful to it, that we'll continue to study your word in the weeks to come and to continue to grow from it, Lord.
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And I thank you for all that you give us as we study together, in Christ's name.
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Amen.