Message preached Thanksgiving Sunday, November 30, 2014 from Mark 2:23-28
Theme: So long as we walk in faithful fellowship with Jesus, we walk in conformity to the holy standards of His Father.
(Unless otherwise noted, all Scripture references are taken from The Holy Bible, New King James Version; copyright 1982, Thomas Nelson, Inc.)
Over the past little while, we have been studying the story that the Gospel writer Mark tells us about the earthly ministry of the Lord Jesus. And as we have seen most recently, it’s a story of growing tension between Himself and the religious leaders of the day.
Before we read this morning’s passage, think with me about how that tension has shown itself. We saw it at the beginning of the second chapter of Mark’s Gospel—when Jesus told the paralyzed man that had been lowered down to Him through the roof of a house, “Son, your sins are forgiven you.” The scribes—the religious scholars of that time—where greatly offended by Jesus’ words. He seemed to them to be a mere man, and yet He presumed to forgive the sins committed against God. Then, as we move on in the second chapter, we see that He invited a notorious sinner—Levi the tax collector—to become one of His disciples. He even went further and ate at a feast with many tax collectors and sinners. The scribes and Pharisees were shocked; and asked, “How is it that He eats with tax collectors and sinners?” And then, as we move further along in the story, we see that He and His disciples were enjoying a feast while the religious leaders were fasting. They wanted to know why He wasn’t requiring His disciples to fast as others did.
And as we come to this morning’s passage—at the end of this eventful chapter of Mark’s Gospel—we see that this tension becomes very intense indeed. Mark tells us;
Now it happened that He went through the grainfields on the Sabbath; and as they went His disciples began to pluck the heads of grain. And the Pharisees said to Him, “Look, why do they do what is not lawful on the Sabbath?” But He said to them, “Have you never read what David did when he was in need and hungry, he and those with him: how he went into the house of God in the days of Abiathar the high priest, and ate the showbread, which is not lawful to eat except for the priests, and also gave some to those who were with him?” And He said to them, “The Sabbath was made for man, and not man for the Sabbath. Therefore the Son of Man is also Lord of the Sabbath” (Mark 2:23-28).
Here, the tension between Jesus and the religious leaders became very serious. They believed Him and His disciples to be in violation of God’s law. But He demonstrated from the Scriptures that He was not violating His Father’s will at all. And more; Jesus even demonstrated that the only way to keep the true spirit of God’s law—as the Father Himself intended it to be kept—is by being in a close relationship with Himself and by following where He leads.
This passage, then, shows us the remarkable and live-transforming truth that, so long as we walk in faithful fellowship with Jesus, we will walk in full conformity to the holy standards of His Father.
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Now; to help our understanding of this, think back with me to something that we talked about a couple of weeks ago.
Do you remember how we looked back in the Old Testament Scriptures and saw that there was a difference between the Old Covenant that God had made with the people of Israel through Moses, and the promised New Covenant that God would establish through His Son Jesus Christ? The Old Covenant specified that the people of Israel were to pursue righteousness before God on the basis of the letter of the law. They needed to walk in strict conformity to the rules and regulations and rituals of the Old Covenant instructions that God gave through Moses. But as we saw, that Old Covenant failed because fallen people can’t keep true to the letter of the law. They sin; and they cannot not walk in righteous conformity to God’s holy commands. But God mercifully promised to make a New Covenant with people—not only with the Jewish people, but with all people. In this New Covenant, people would experience true righteousness with God on the basis of a relationship with God’s Son, Jesus Christ. If they became united to Jesus by their faith in Him, then their sins would be atoned for by His sinless sacrifice on the cross, and they would be brought into newness of life by His resurrection, and they would walk in complete righteousness before God as they followed Him in love.
You see; we mustn’t ever make the mistake of thinking that Jesus came into this world to set aside God’s law. People sometimes suggest that that’s what Jesus came to do; and it is a terribly wrong thing to believe about Him. He Himself once said;
“Do not think that I came to destroy the Law or the Prophets. I did not come to destroy but to fulfill. For assuredly, I say to you, till heaven and earth pass away, one jot or one tittle will by no means pass from the law till all is fulfilled. Whoever therefore breaks one of the least of these commandments, and teaches men so, shall be called least in the kingdom of heaven; but whoever does and teaches them, he shall be called great in the kingdom of heaven” (Matthew 5:17-20).
Do you remember what the Father Himself said to Jesus at His baptism? We studied those words not long ago. The Father affirmed to Him, “You are My beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased” (Mark 1:11). And so, you can see that Jesus never set the Father’s law aside. Quite the opposite; He always did the will of the Father. He never sinned. In fact, He lived a life on this earth that was in absolutely perfect conformity to the holy requirements of the law of God His Father. And when the Father said that it is in His Son that He is “well pleased”; that means that we also are well pleasing to the Father—and can only be well pleasing to Him—so long as we are ‘in’ His Son!
Let me put all this another way. We can never be righteous before God on the basis of a strict conformity to the letter of the Old Covenant law—the rules and regulations and rituals of the law given through Moses. And it’s not because there was anything wrong with the law; because that law itself is a perfect expression of the character of God. Rather, the problem is with us. We are fallen sinners who just simply do not have it in us to keep true to the letter of the law. But as the apostle Paul has put it in Romans 8:3-4;
For what the law could not do in that it was weak through the flesh, God did by sending His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, on account of sin: He condemned sin in the flesh, that the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us who do not walk according to the flesh but according to the Spirit (Romans 8:3-4).
If we walk in deep, spiritual union by faith with Jesus Christ in the power of the Holy Spirit—walking in fellowship with Him, keeping true to His instructions to us, allowing His word to abide in us, putting our feet in the paths that our good Shepherd tells us to place them as we are led by Him—He will always lead us in perfect conformity with the holy will of His Father. He has already accomplished all righteousness for us; and if we walk in fellowship with Him, He will now never lead us in any other way than in complete acceptance before His Father.
What a liberating way to live before God!—Not by religious rules, not by burdensome regulations, not by ceremonies and rituals; but by a relationship of love in perfect righteousness through union with His Son! That’s the marvel of the New Covenant realities we live under in Christ!
And that’s what this morning’s passage illustrates to us wonderfully.
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Let’s look at it a little more closely, and see how it shows this truth to us. Notice first . . .
1. WHAT THE DISCIPLES WERE DOING (v. 23).
Mark tells us, “Now it happened that He went through the grainfields on the Sabbath; and as they went His disciples began to pluck the heads of grain” (v. 23).
Now; you need to know that the disciples were not doing anything wrong in plucking the grain out of the field of someone else. They were not stealing. The Old Testament law, in fact, commanded that this be allowed. Way back in the Old Testament law, God commanded the farmers of Israel:
“When you reap the harvest of your land, you shall not wholly reap the corners of your field, nor shall you gather the gleanings of your harvest. And you shall not glean your vineyard, nor shall you gather every grape of your vineyard; you shall leave them for the poor and the stranger: I am the Lord your God” (Leviticus 19:6-7).
This was a mercy that God allowed to the benefit of hungry people; so that as they traveled along, they were free to go into the extreme corners of the farm field and eat of the produce that the farmer was to leave for them. And that’s what the disciples of Jesus were doing. They were plucking the kernels from off of ripe stocks of grain, rubbing the kernels in their hand, blowing away the chaff, and eating the fruit of the field that was freely left for them to enjoy.
Now; it’s interesting that, in the original language, we’re told that the disciples “began to make a way” as they ate the grain. You don’t see that represented in most translations; but that’s how it’s translated in the New American Standard version; that they “began to make their way along while picking the heads of grain”. Eugene Peterson in The Message even translates it that they were making “a path”. It may be that the grain that they were gleaning along the way was growing in a spot just into the field—a little past some brushes and thistles.\, and slightly out of easy reach. It may be that the disciples had to clear a small path to get to it.
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But that’s when the religious leaders came on to the scene. They were upset by what the disciples were doing—perhaps not just that they were gleaning on the Sabbath Day, but that they also may have made a path for themselves in order to do so. The story of their action leads us to . . .
2. HOW THE PHARISEES INTERPRETED IT (v. 24).
Mark tells us, “And the Pharisees said to Him, ‘Look, why do they do what is not lawful on the Sabbath?’” (v. 24). In fact, in the original language, it’s rather strong–”Behold!” You can tell that they are quite upset by what they were witnessing.
Now; what did they think that the disciples were doing wrong? It wasn’t that they were gleaning grain. That was clearly permitted by the law of Moses. Rather, they thought that they were breaking the Sabbath in doing so. You remember the words of the Fourth Commandment; don’t you? God had said;
“Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy. Six days you shall labor and do all your work, but the seventh day is the Sabbath of the Lord your God. In it you shall do no work: you, nor your son, nor your daughter, nor your male servant, nor your female servant, nor your cattle, nor your stranger who is within your gates. For in six days the Lord made the heavens and the earth, the sea, and all that is in them, and rested the seventh day. Therefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and hallowed it” (Exodus 20:8-11).
What the disciples were doing couldn’t be considered “work” in the conventional sense of the fourth commandment. But the religious leaders of Jesus’ day sought to protect people from violating that law by surrounding it with additional laws that dealt with how the Sabbath was to be kept. These were spelled out in what is called the Talmud—or “the Instruction”. It is a collection of instructions—originally oral, but eventually written down—that specified how the law of God was to be kept by Jewish people in specific life-situations. The Talmud had 39 specific categories of activities that were prohibited on the Sabbath; and many of them had to do with work in the field. There were prohibitions drawn up by the rabbis against plowing, or against sowing, or against reaping, or against gathering, or against threshing, or against winnowing; and all of them were meant to keep people from drawing to close to the line and breaking the Sabbath.
And when the Pharisees saw what the disciples of Jesus were doing, they felt that many of those prohibitions were being violated. In their mind, they were breaking the Sabbath law prohibitions against “reaping” and “gathering” in that they were pulling the heads off of grain, and taking them up, and storing them in their hands or garments. And they thought the disciples were breaking the prohibitions against “threshing” and “winnowing” in that they were grinding the grain in their hands and blowing the chaff away. They may even have seen it as a violation against the Sabbath in that the disciples had begun to make “a way” out into the field to obtain the grain.
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Now, I can understand the concern of the Pharisees; can’t you?—given their perspective? They were people committed to the Old Covenant; and from their viewpoint, the prohibitions that the rabbis had established to protect the Sabbath were being violated by Jesus’ disciples. Jesus didn’t seem to be concerned about it, or appear to do anything to stop them.
But Jesus was not disrespecting the Sabbath. It was His Father’s commandment; and He honored it and obeyed it with all His heart. And what’s more, He taught His disciples to do so also. But it’s also important to remember that Jesus was respecting and observing the Sabbath according to the Father’s will—and not as the rules and regulations and prohibitions of man, no matter how well-intentioned they were, demanded that it be respected and observed.
This leads us to what Mark tells us about the response of Jesus with respect to the actions of His followers; and specifically to . . .
3. WHAT THE SCRIPTURES SAID ABOUT IT (vv. 25-27).
Look at how Jesus began. “But He said to them, ‘Have you never read what David did when he was in need and hungry, he and those with him . . .” (v. 25). What an interesting thing for Jesus to say to Pharisees!—“Haven’t you guys read the Scriptures?” Of course they had! But clearly, they had become so focused on the man-made religious rules and regulations that they had lost sight of what the Scriptures actually taught. He was calling their attention away from the rules of men and back to the word of God.
Now; the story that Jesus was making reference to is one that is found in 1 Samuel 21. It tells the story of what happened when David came to the priest who served in the tabernacle of God in the days of King Saul. David had gotten word of Saul’s murderous plot against him; and so, he gathered some men and fled for his life. That passage tells us;
Now David came to Nob, to Ahimelech the priest. And Ahimelech was afraid when he met David, and said to him, “Why are you alone, and no one is with you?” So David said to Ahimelech the priest, “The king has ordered me on some business, and said to me, ‘Do not let anyone know anything about the business on which I send you, or what I have commanded you.’ And I have directed my young men to such and such a place. Now therefore, what have you on hand? Give me five loaves of bread in my hand, or whatever can be found.” And the priest answered David and said, “There is no common bread on hand; but there is holy bread, if the young men have at least kept themselves from women” (1 Samuel 21:1-4).
This “holy bread” was the shewbread that God had commanded the priests to prepare and place before Him in the holy place of the tabernacle every Sabbath. Apparently, the old bread had been removed, and fresh, new “shewbread” had been put in its place. Only the priests were permitted to eat it. But here, Ahimelech was looking at David and his soldiers—a group of very hungry men in need.
Then David answered the priest, and said to him, “Truly, women have been kept from us about three days since I came out. And the vessels of the young men are holy, and the bread is in effect common, even though it was consecrated in the vessel this day.” So the priest gave him holy bread; for there was no bread there but the showbread which had been taken from before the Lord, in order to put hot bread in its place on the day when it was taken away (vv. 5-6).
Did you know that even though that was a violation of the letter of the law regarding the bread of the tabernacle, we’re not told anywhere in Scripture that David, or his men, or even Ahimelech the priest had done wrong. It was a necessary act of mercy; and in this case, the requirements of true mercy were more important than the strict letter of the law. To have sent David and his men away famished, when bread was there and available, would have been an unmerciful thing to do. Jesus—the Son of God Himself—approved of this act of mercy to David; and went on to ask the Pharisees if they had read that story; “how he went into the house of God in the days of Abiathar the high priest, and ate the showbread, which is not lawful to eat except for the priests, and also gave some to those who were with him?’” (vv. 25-26).
Now; I have to pause here and speak of something that a lot of skeptics of the Bible are fond of pointing out. That Old Testament passage from 1 Samuel 21 said that Ahimelech was the high priest that gave the bread to David; while Jesus—as Mark tells the story—only made mention of Ahimelech’s son Abiathar. Did someone make a mistake? Not at all. If you read on in the story, Abiathar was clearly present when David came; and since Ahimelech was put to death by Saul, and since Abiathar became high priest in his place, it’s obvious that this truly did happen “in the days of Abiathar the high priest”. Why it was that the Spirit of God led Mark to say that this was in the days of Abiathar rather than of Ahimelech may remain something of a mystery to us; but it certainly wasn’t error.
But now; notice the point that Jesus makes from this story about the mercy that was shown to David. “And He said to them, ‘The Sabbath was made for man, and not man for the Sabbath’” (v. 26). The Sabbath that God established in His holy law was not meant to be a burden to be borne, but a blessing to be enjoyed. It was given for people’s good—so that they would not be made to work day after day, week after week, without rest. It was given to them that they might relax from their labors, and give their day to the things that restore their soul before God. It wasn’t that man was created in order to benefit the needs of the Sabbath, but that the Sabbath was given to benefit the needs of man.
Therefore, to make the disciples go hungry on the Sabbath—out of a strict demand that they keep the laws that men to protect the Sabbath—is to place the rules and regulations above people. That’s not how things work in the New Covenant brought about by our Lord. In fact, in Matthew’s telling of this story, he has it that the Lord Jesus quoted Hosea 6:6 to the Pharisees; and told them, “But if you had known what this means, ‘I desire mercy and not sacrifice,’ you would not have condemned the guiltless” (Matthew 12:7).
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Now; if that was the only point that this passage was making—and if we simply stopped there—that would make this passage very liberating. The Sabbath was made for man; and not man for the Sabbath. By extension, we could say that God’s good rules for living are given to serve our needs; rather than that we are created in order to serve the needs of the rules. We must not focus so much on the strict letter of the rules and regulations that we lose our sense of the spirit of God’s law.
But that’s not the final point of Mark’s description of this remarkable event. The final point is found in . . .
4. WHAT JESUS DECLARED BECAUSE OF IT (v. 28).
Jesus must have shocked the Pharisees most of all when He declared to them, “Therefore the Son of Man is also Lord of the Sabbath” (v. 28). In saying this, He was saying that not only is the Sabbath meant to serve man; but that He Himself was Lord and Master of the Sabbath itself!
Think this through. First, notice that He said that He is “the Son of Man”. The Pharisees would have recognized that as a name for the Messiah—taken from right out of the Old Testament in the seventh chapter of the prophet Daniel. For Jesus to declare Himself the Son of Man was to declare Himself the Son of God in human flesh, and the Lord of mankind—with utter authority over all humanity.
Then, consider that, as He—the Son of Man, with full authority over that which concerns humanity—has declared, the Sabbath was made for man, and not man for the Sabbath. That would mean that Jesus—the Son of Man—not only has authority over mankind, but also over all that God has given to man for the good of mankind. In other words, Jesus—He that is Lord over mankind—is Lord also of the Sabbath.
And that means that, to walk in fellowship with Jesus is to walk in fellowship with the One who is Lord over the very law of God. He will never lead us in any way but in complete conformity to the will of the Father. God the Father places us in Christ—the Son in whom He is well pleased—
who became for us wisdom from God—and righteousness and sanctification and redemption (1 Corinthians 1:30).
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And so, dear brothers and sisters in Christ; what does this mean for us? I suggest that it means that the greatest thing we can do to walk in absolute obedience to the Father is to grow in a deep relationship of love and obedience to Jesus Christ. Walk in deep fellowship with Him by faith. Obey His commands. Pray to the Father in His name. Let the Holy Scriptures abide in you; and walk in step with the Holy Spirit.
And as we do, we’ll never need to fear that we are wandering away from God’s holy law. As we walk with Jesus, we will walk in obedience to the Father—not on the basis of rituals and regulations and rules; but on the basis of a relationship of love with the very Lord of the law.