Lord of the Sabbath : Part 1
Lord Shaftesbury was a member of Parliament in London in the late 1700s. He was a devout Christ follower and a tireless advocate for the poor and the mentally ill. Because he worked closely with the poor, he was well respected among them, and his interactions generated some unique insights and improved some of their lives.
In one instance, the London fruit and vegetable peddlers told him that their donkeys, if they were rested one day in seven, could carry their loads 30 miles per day. But if the peddlers worked the donkeys seven days a week, those same donkeys could only travel 15 miles a day.
The livelihood of these peddlers depended on their animals, and they discovered that they lost 75 miles of travel each week by working the donkey every day; not only that, but they also had a sick, shabby-looking donkey. If they used the donkey just six days per week, they gained 3,900 miles of travel in a year and had a sleek, nice-looking donkey.
Do donkeys benefit from the Ten Commandments? Here’s Deuteronomy 5:14. “The seventh day is a Sabbath to the Lord your God. On it you shall not do any work, you or your son or your daughter or your male servant or your female servant, or your ox or your donkey or any of your livestock, or the sojourner who is within your gates, that your male servant and your female servant may rest as well as you.
God made men and donkeys. He knew what was good for them and put both into the commandments. An unbeliever who ignores God’s law doesn’t know enough to run a donkey without killing it. In Paris, France, there was no Sabbath observance during this time (the time of the French Revolution), and there were more suicides in proportion to the population than in any other city in Christendom.
In our continuing study of Mark’s Gospel, we move into the end of chapter two. We’ve learned that the common people flocked to hear His teachings and to experience His healing and the Pharisees had begun to openly oppose Him.
The analogies that we looked at last time were an indication of the growing differences between Jesus and the Pharisees. His teaching, when compared with traditional Jewish belief, was like a new garment that will replace an old one or like new wine that will burst old wineskins. And so, at the end of this chapter, rather than try to placate the opposition, Jesus seems to “throw down the gauntlet.” He confronts them with the statement that HE is the One who is qualified to decide what constitutes keeping the Sabbath, not them!
Several words from His statement become the title for our study; “Lord of the Sabbath.” Now, I will read our text, Mark:2:23-3:6.
As we reflect on the words “Lord of the Sabbath,” we learn several things. First, the word, Lord, establishes authority. And the word, Sabbath, establishes the sphere or area in which He exercises that authority as Lord. As we study, we want to see how Jesus, in His position of authority, understood and defined the original intent of the Sabbath.
In this text, Jesus supports His claim to the lordship of the Sabbath by posing two arguments.
His Argument from Scriptural Precedent
The scene Mark creates for us in the opening verse of our text must’ve been quite common at that time. According to Deuteronomy 23:25, if you were passing by a grain field, olive grove, or vineyard, you could pick and eat what you needed to satisfy your hunger. But you couldn’t put any in your basket to carry home.
Picture Jesus and His disciples walking beside a field of standing grain. As they walk, the disciples strip the heads of grain from the stalk and rub the kernels together in their hands to remove the outer husks. I remember doing that on the small farm where I spent my childhood. You can strip the head off the stalk of wheat or barley in one smooth motion. Then, rub the kernels together in your hand to remove the husks, blow gently so those husks float away, and you have a ready-made snack – not very tasty, but nutritious!
What the disciples were doing was satisfying their hunger. The Pharisees immediately accused them of doing something that was not lawful for the Sabbath. How so? To the Pharisees, there were three simultaneous violations of the law: reaping, threshing, and preparing food!
The Pharisees had come up with 39 specific kinds of activities that were prohibited on the Sabbath. I think the simple act of walking took more work than the process of eating a few kernels of grain. And the Pharisees had figured out how far you could walk on the Sabbath, too.
Who said that the actions of the disciples violated the Law? It was the Pharisees. They saw themselves as the final arbiters of the Law. But Jesus had something to say about that.
Now, before I look at Jesus’ response, I want to say a bit about the Pharisees. First, while Jesus was sharply critical of them, He also realized that theirs’ was a sincere attempt to obey the law. If that weren’t the case, then why did He say things like, “The scribes and the Pharisees sit in Moses’ seat: All therefore whatsoever they bid you observe, that observe and do; but do not after their works: for they say, and do not.” That’s Matthew 23:2-3.
The Jewish historian Josephus says, “[in the time of Jesus] …the Pharisees comprised only about five percent of the nation and numbered just over 6,000 full-fledged members. They were regarded as the most accurate interpreters of the Law and were held in such esteem that all Jewish prayers and religious services were brought into conformity with what the Pharisees taught. Even the Sadducees made some concessions to Pharisaic practices.”
Jesus didn’t fault them for their study and application of the Law. He faulted them for giving their interpretations equal weight with the Scripture. In fact, at one point, Jesus said to them in Mark 7:9, “You have a fine way of rejecting the commandment of God in order to establish your tradition!” So, because Jesus and His disciples did not keep the law exactly the way the Pharisees thought it should be kept, they were guilty of violating the law.
Jesus responded by appealing to the Scriptures. Two things stand out: first, God’s Word is authoritative. It gives direction for living. Second, the Pharisees accepted and studied the complete Old Testament, not just the Torah, as the Sadducees did. So, they should have been familiar with the fact that, in some cases, personal needs preempt the law.
Jesus takes them back to the experience of David in First Samuel 21. There, David was fleeing from Saul and came to the town of Nob. This was the location of the Tabernacle during the reign of Saul. David was hungry, so he asked Ahimelech, the priest, for five loaves of bread or whatever was available. Ahimelech told him the only thing he had on hand was showbread, the hallowed bread, The Bread of the Presence.
Mark says it was when Abiathar was the high priest. Luke says Ahimelech gave him the bread. Is this a contradiction? Ahimelech was the father of Abiathar, and after Doeg, the Edomite, slaughtered all the priests at Nob, Abiathar was the only one left, and he became the high priest. It would be a little like saying, “King David was born in Bethlehem.” David wasn’t king when he was born, but this is a common way of speaking. So, there is no contradiction here.
The Bread of the Presence was 12 loaves, one loaf for each tribe of Israel. And these loaves were not small either. Each one was made from two-tenths of an ephah, about 4 liters or a gallon. Jewish sources say each loaf weighed about 5 kilograms or 11 pounds!
This bread was a symbol of God’s desire for fellowship and communion with His people. The loaves were placed on a golden table in the Holy Place of the Tabernacle and remained there for one week. It was unleavened bread, or it would’ve spoiled in that amount of time. Then, they were removed, and fresh loaves were put in their place.
The bread that had reached its expiration date was the only bread Ahimelech had on hand. That hallowed bread, according to Leviticus 24:9, was to be eaten by the priests. Leviticus doesn’t state that this bread was forbidden to others. Jesus says it was “for the priests alone.”
So, what was Jesus getting at? First, there does seem to be a bit of a ‘dig’ at the Pharisees, a rebuke by Jesus. Most English translations don’t communicate it very well. The closest we can come is something like, “…have you not read even this…? After all, these men were scholars and had a high regard for the Hebrew Scriptures; they should’ve been familiar with what happened.
Jesus makes it clear by this illustration that human need trumps the letter of the law. Now, that statement can be taken by some as a license to do whatever they want. But that violates the spirit of what Jesus is teaching. The key is human NEED. This illustration isn’t about convenience; it’s about need.
Today, within Christendom, there’s considerable debate about how this principle of ‘one-day-in-seven’ should be observed: Sabbath or Sunday, or if it should be observed at all! Those who argue for a Saturday observance point back to Genesis 2:2-3. These verses record how God rested on the seventh day of Creation and set that day apart as a day of rest. They make a valid point. Our brothers and sisters in the country of Nepal worship on Saturday for a very pragmatic reason: it’s the day when government offices and businesses are closed.
Those who advocate for Sunday observance point to the Resurrection of Christ and the fact that the early church met for times of worship and fellowship on the first day of the week (Acts 20:7 and First Corinthians 16:2). They, too, have valid points for their practice.
Then another group says there’s no need for any one day of the week to be set aside as a worship day. They argue that every day should be a day of worship. They point out that the observance of the Sabbath and feast days were only shadows of things to come, and when Jesus died, rose again, and ascended to heaven, those shadows and types contained in the law were all fulfilled. So now, no one particular day of the week is more holy than the others. They quote Galatians 4:10 and similar verses. Their argument has some valid points, too.
So, what do we make of these different ideas and Jesus’ teaching? One thing seems clear: don’t reject out of hand those who see things differently than you do! At the same time, remember that there are biblical commands like those in Hebrews 10:23-25. “Let us hold fast the profession of our faith without wavering; (for he is faithful that promised;) And let us consider one another to provoke unto love and to good works: Not forsaking the assembling of ourselves together, as the manner of some is but exhorting one another: and so much the more, as ye see the day approaching.”
I believe that those who use the argument that no one particular day is to be set aside for worship, fellowship, and inspiration are at the greatest risk of becoming self-absorbed in their business and pleasure. There is something valuable about structure and discipline in our lives.
But then there’s also the risk of becoming what we call “a Sunday-Christian.” You go to church and observe the day of rest, but the rest of the week, those who don’t know you went to Sunday service could never tell that you are a follower of Christ. So, in reality, this whole issue becomes a matter of what’s in your heart.
One of the blessings of my childhood was my parents’ view of the importance of regular worship and fellowship with other Believers. My parents had a very simple guiding principle: when there was a meeting in our church, we were there! That wasn’t always convenient, but to them, it was a commitment.
I never felt like my parents made that commitment to look good in the eyes of other people or to appear as being more spiritual than others. They simply made a good-faith attempt to live out biblical principles in a practical way.
As a result of that commitment, certain activities were off-limits for us on Sunday. I didn’t necessarily agree with them in all those areas. But I still see great value in keeping one day a week as a special day unto the Lord. But that special day should be a blessing, not a burden.
I remember, in the aftermath of Hurricane Agnes in 1972, going to a nearby town on a Sunday afternoon to help with the cleanup after that massive storm. It was hard, dirty, exhausting work shoveling several feet of mud and muck out of basements. Yet we worked that Sunday as an expression of our love for the Lord and our neighbors.
I believe that is, at least in part, what Jesus was trying to teach the Pharisees. Their rigid enforcement of rules and regulations turned what should have been a delight into drudgery; not only for them, but for those who looked up to them as spiritual guides. We talked about that in a previous study about fasting when the bridegroom is present.
If only they had truly understood the words of Isaiah 58, they would’ve known that God intended the Sabbath to be a time of great joy, a time of blessing and rich fellowship. The focus of Isaiah 58 is on God first and then on blessing others.
There are many professing Christians today who see God’s commands as drudgery. They think God is out to spoil their fun and to make their lives monotonous. They feel this way because they focus on themselves and what they want and enjoy. But Jesus said that joy in life comes by learning to serve others.
As God in the flesh, Jesus perfectly understood the needs of His followers. He still understands today. And so, He said to the Pharisees, “I’m the Master of the Sabbath. I helped write these laws; I’ll show you how to interpret them.” Here, we have the Living Word appealing to a precedent in the written Word to establish His authority to interpret the Law!