Mark 2:23-3:6
Introduction: You may
remember the story of the pastor who found the roads impassable one Sunday
morning, but…
The river was
frozen so he decided to skate on the river to get to church. When he arrived
the elders of the church were horrified that their preacher had skated on the
Lord's day. After the service they held a meeting to rebuke his worldly
behavior. The pastor explained that it was either skate to church or not go at
all. Finally one elder asked, "Did you enjoy it?" When the preacher
answered, "Well no, not really" the board decided it was all right.
One of the great temptations facing fallen humans is
to define spirituality in terms of what we don’t
do! Nowhere was that tendency more evident than in the Sabbath
regulations of first century Judaism. The background of course was the Word
of the Lord stated in the decalogue, the Ten Commandments…
8 "Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy. 9 Six days you shall labor, and do
all your work, 10 but 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, your male servant, or your female servant,
or your livestock, or the sojourner who is within your gates. 11 For in six days the LORD
made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them, and rested the seventh
day. Therefore the LORD blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy… (Exod
20:8-11).
The Sabbath Commandment was stated again, 40 years
later as Moses wrote Deuteronomy for the new generation which was about to
enter the Land. This time, rather than pointing to what God did in Creation,
Moses refers to the Exodus…
12 “Observe the Sabbath day, to keep it holy, as the
LORD your God commanded you. 13
Six days you shall labor and do all your work,
14 but 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. 15 You shall remember that you
were a slave in the land of Egypt, and the LORD your God brought you out from
there with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm. Therefore the LORD your
God commanded you to keep the Sabbath day…” (Deut
5:12-15)
God embedded “rest” in the Creation order, as He
himself “rested” on the seventh day. In
Deuteronomy, for the new generation, for whom the deliverance from Egypt was
not a recent memory, the Sabbath was an ongoing reminder of where they had come
from, and as they had experienced God’s gracious deliverance they should
extend grace toward their servants and the sojourners among them. “Rest” was a blessing intended for all humans.
God had set apart (“made holy”) this day for rest. It was also an expression of
faith. To rest from labor meant trusting that God would supply, as He had in
the wilderness.
Six days
were enough for work. But what is “work”? That
was one of the questions that seemingly took over the thinking of the rabbis in
the centuries leading up to the coming of Christ. The traditions of the
“fathers” would later be written down in the Talmud. Twenty-four chapters of
the Talmud dealt with Sabbath regulations. What was intended to be a blessing had
been turned into a burden. The disciples had probably broken at least a couple
of Sabbath “rules.” For one, the traditions said Jews were allowed only to walk
only 2,000 minus one, 1,999 paces on the Sabbath (Dick C. aims for 20,000 a
day!). It may be in getting to the field they exceeded that limit. “Harvesting” also was prohibited, as well as
threshing. Remember the context of these
stories in Mark’s Gospel…
The two
scenes described in these verses are the 4th and 5th in a
series of five controversies between Jesus and the religious establishment that
began in chapter 2. The first three dealt with 1) forgiveness (2:1-12), 2)
fellowship [eating with sinners!] (2:15-17), and 3) fasting
(2:18-22). The two here have to do with 4) Feeding themselves from the
field (2:23-38), and 5) freeing a man from his physical infirmity
(3:1-6) [OK, I went too far on the alliteration with the last two!].
Jesus was speaking and acting, and making
claims, that didn’t seem consistent with what a first century rabbi should be
doing. How could He speak with such authority, even claiming to forgive
sins? And where did He get the power to heal? Why did He
associate with tax collectors and sinners? And now, how could He allow his
disciples to break the traditions regarding the Sabbath? Mark continues to
write a Gospel that encourages evangelism and discipleship, still drawing the
reader to consider his answer to three questions: 1) Who is Jesus? 2) Why did
He come? 3) What does it mean to follow Him? In Matthew’s gospel, immediately
before his account of this same scene, Jesus offers “rest” to those who labor
and are heavy laden, if they will come to Him. We read in Matthew 11:28-30,
28 Come to me, all
who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. 29 Take my yoke upon you, and
learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for
your souls. 30 For my yoke is
easy, and my burden is light."
The Maine*
Idea: The spirit of the Sabbath is resting in Him, free to
experience the grace and life that only Jesus could provide.
I. Who is Jesus?
Lord of all… GOD the Son (2:23-28)! The initial
conflict focuses on His disciples casually picking some grain to satisfy their
hunger as they walked through a field. Once again the Pharisees were there,
watching and waiting.
23 One Sabbath he was going through the grain fields,
and as they made their way, his disciples began to pluck heads of grain. 24 And the Pharisees were saying
to him, "Look, why are they doing what is not lawful on the
Sabbath?" 25 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: 26
how he entered the house of God, in the time of Abiathar the high priest, and
ate the bread of the Presence, which it is not lawful for any but the priests
to eat, and also gave it to those who were with him?" 27 And he said to them, "The
Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath. 28 So the Son of Man is lord even
of the Sabbath."
First of all, notice the setting for this
scene. It is the Sabbath, and as the disciples passed through a field they
began to pluck heads of grain, rub them between their hands, and eat as they
went, in order to satisfy their hunger. Were
they “working” in so doing? According to Alfred Edersheim (a Jewish believer in
Jesus from the 19th century) the Talmud had added 24 chapters on
Sabbath Law to the command to sanctify the Sabbath day. The idea was to have
such a “hedge” around the Sabbath that no one would be guilty of violating the
commandment. Some of the rabbinic prohibitions may sound a little silly, for
example…
“Baths could
not be taken for fear some of the water might spill on to the floor and “wash”
it. Chairs could not be moved because dragging them might make a furrow in the
ground, and a woman could not look into a mirror lest she see a gray hair and
be tempted to pull it out… If a person became ill on the Sabbath, only enough
treatment could be given to keep him alive. Treatment to make him improve was
deemed work, and therefore forbidden…”
You get the
idea? The rabbis had gone far beyond the Scripture and had lost site of the
spirit of the Law. The Sabbath was not intended by God to be a burden. It
wasn’t a threat, it was a promise, a picture of the “eschatological rest” for
which we were created. The Scribes and Pharisees had lost sight of the spirit
of the Sabbath commandment. And so Jesus turns to a scriptural example, a “case
study” that would show that the Sabbath Law, as God had given it, did not
preclude people from satisfying their hunger. Basically He is asking them,
“Haven’t you read your Bible?” He points them to the story of David and his men
eating the “Bread of the Presence”
in 1 Samuel 21:1-6,
Then David came
to Nob to Ahimelech the priest. And Ahimelech came to meet David trembling and
said to him, "Why are you alone, and no one with you?" 2 And David said to Ahimelech the
priest, "The king has charged me with a matter and said to me, 'Let no one
know anything of the matter about which I send you, and with which I have
charged you.' I have made an appointment with the young men for such and such a
place. 3 Now then, what do
you have on hand? Give me five loaves of bread, or whatever is here." 4 And the priest answered David,
"I have no common bread on hand, but there is holy bread- if the young men
have kept themselves from women." 5
And David answered the priest, "Truly women have been kept from us as
always when I go on an expedition. The vessels of the young men are holy even
when it is an ordinary journey. How much more today will their vessels be
holy?" 6 So the priest
gave him the holy bread, for there was no bread there but the bread of the
Presence, which is removed from before the LORD, to be replaced by hot bread on
the day it is taken away.
There was no
indication either of the disapproval of the priests or the rebuke of the Lord. Jesus is showing that we can see in Scripture
that the Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath! So, He is teaching the Pharisees.
Jesus left some room for His hearers to exercise
“hearing with faith”. First of all, Jesus chose to use a potentially ambiguous
messianic title, “Son of Man.”
Secondly by using the title in the third person, there could have been some
question about to whom He was referring. For example in John 12:34 we read,
“We have heard
from the Law that the Christ remains forever. How can you say that the Son of
Man must be lifted up? Who is this Son of Man?”
Only Jesus used
that title for himself, and the ambiguity was intentional. Remember Jesus had a
plan which included three years of ministry with His disciples, teaching and
preparing them, before culminating in the unfolding plan of God: His own death
and resurrection. The conflict with the leaders would culminate in the passion,
but not yet, His day had not come. For those with “ears to hear,” the title
“Son of Man” would evoke the passage in Daniel
7:13-14…
13 I saw in the night visions,
and behold, with the clouds of heaven there came one like a son of man,
and he came to the Ancient of Days and was presented before him. 14 And to him was given dominion
and glory and a kingdom, that all peoples, nations, and languages should serve
him; his dominion is an everlasting dominion, which shall not pass away, and
his kingdom one that shall not be destroyed.
Who is the
Son of Man? Jesus. And He is Lord, even of the Sabbath. The Sabbath
was intended as a blessing, not a burden. And it looked forward to the “rest”
that He would offer in Christ. The spirit of the Sabbath means resting in Him,
free to experience the grace and life that only Jesus could provide.
II. Why did He
come? (3:1-5)? To reveal the truth and the (only) Way to
Life.
Again he
entered the synagogue, and a man was there with a withered hand. 2 And they watched Jesus, to see
whether he would heal him on the Sabbath, so that they might accuse him. 3 And he said to the man with the
withered hand, "Come here." 4
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. 5 And he looked around at them
with anger, grieved at their hardness of heart, and said to the man,
"Stretch out your hand." He stretched it out, and his hand was
restored.
We have two
different lines to the story to consider at this point: 1) a confrontation with
the religious leaders that exposes their depravity, and 2) a miracle of healing
that both vindicates Jesus and looks ahead to what He came to do. There is
irony here as the leaders are “watching”
Jesus, not to hear what He would say or do that might enlighten their
understanding of who He is, but rather that they might witness something that
would give them grounds to accuse Him. This word implies watching critically
and closely, ready to spring a trap. The same term is used in Acts 9 to
describe the men who had taken an oath to kill Saul (Paul). They were waiting
for him at the city gate. It is clear that the religious leaders, as they watched
Jesus with critical eyes, viewed this as a trap, and the man with the withered
hand was the “bait”! The word “accuse”
has legal ramifications, the idea was to bring a charge against Jesus for
violating the law.
Would Jesus do the “work” of
miraculously healing the man and so violate the Sabbath? He is grieved by their
hard hearts. We see Jesus teaching the Pharisees. And
He shows compassion on the man. The Lord of the Sabbath does “good.” This
healing was temporary, provisional. It pointed ahead. The spirit of the Sabbath
is resting in Him, free to experience the grace and life that only Jesus could
provide.
III. What does
it mean to follow Him? Take up your cross (3:6)!
6 The Pharisees went out and immediately held counsel
with the Herodians against him, how to destroy him.
That of course points ahead to what
Jesus had just spoken about in the preceding context: the day would come when
He would be “taken away” from them…
as Isaiah 53:8 said. Now the reader get
an ominous indication as to how that would happen: the leaders of His own people,
the Jews, were already plotting to kill Him! The context anticipates what Jesus
later said in the upper room: don’t be surprised if the world hates you,
remember it hated me first! It seems that Mark is writing to a community of
believers that is experiencing persecution. Remember, we are pilgrims, and yes,
we live in a fallen world.
The corollary to the suffering of
Christ, that is, the suffering of His disciples, is explicitly addressed by
Jesus after the confession of Peter (Mk 8:29) and before the Transfiguration
(Mk 9:2-8). In that context, as He
speaks to the crowd along with His disciples, He says,
“If anyone would
come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. 35 For whoever would save his life
will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake and the gospel's will save
it…” (Mk 8:34b-35).
What does
it mean to follow Him? If Jesus was hated by the world and suffered, so
will those who follow Him. As Peter said in his first epistle,
“6 In this you rejoice,
though now for a little while, as was necessary, you have been grieved by
various trials, 7 so that the
tested genuineness of your faith- more precious than gold that perishes though
it is tested by fire- may be found to result in praise and glory and honor at
the revelation of Jesus Christ…” (I Pet 1:6,7).
God has a
plan, and it will culminate in true rest, eternal life in intimate
fellowship with God, the abundant life, unencumbered by sin, for which we were
created.
What is God saying to me in this passage? The spirit
of the Sabbath is resting in Him, free to experience the grace and life that
only Jesus could provide.
What would God have me to do in response to
this passage? I can safely say your pastor has never skated to church on a Sunday morning! And yes, I know that we have a breadth of views regarding the
application of the Sabbath Law in our lives (Is it 7th day, Sunday,
or everyday consciously dedicated to the Lord?). Did you know that there was some debate in the Colossian
Church? Paul said in Col 2:13-17 (cf.
Rom 14:5,6)…
13 And you, who were dead in your trespasses and the
uncircumcision of your flesh, God made alive together with him, having forgiven
us all our trespasses, 14 by
canceling the record of debt that stood against us with its legal demands. This
he set aside, nailing it to the cross… 16
Therefore let no one pass judgment on you in questions of food and drink, or
with regard to a festival or a new moon or a Sabbath. 17 These are a shadow of the things
to come, but the substance belongs to Christ.
The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the
Sabbath! Jesus said, “Come to me… and I
will give you rest.” That rest is, and will be, ours in Christ. We have the
Spirit as a seal and down payment on our inheritance. Jesus will return, and we
will fully enter our “rest.” That is our hope! Until that day we are here “on
assignment.” Remember, you can’t change the world, but you can change your
world! Pray for your mission field, share, invite, point them to Jesus! AMEN.
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