6:1 One Sabbath Jesus was going through the grainfields, and his disciples began to pick some heads of grain, rub them in their hands and eat the kernels. 2 Some of the Pharisees asked, “Why are you doing what is unlawful on the Sabbath?”When we think today of serious crimes—or even serious sins—what comes to mind? Murder? Rape? Torture? Defrauding widows or elderly people of their life savings? Those are indeed serious sins. But you’ve omitted one that figures not only in the select Ten Commandments, but also is based on the very first acts of God in creation. I refer to the Fourth Commandment (Exodus 20:8-11):
3 Jesus answered them, “Have you never read what David did when he and his companions were hungry? 4 He entered the house of God, and taking the consecrated bread, he ate what is lawful only for priests to eat. And he also gave some to his companions.” 5 Then Jesus said to them, “The Son of Man is Lord of the Sabbath.”
6 On another Sabbath he went into the synagogue and was teaching, and a man was there whose right hand was shriveled. 7 The Pharisees and the teachers of the law were looking for a reason to accuse Jesus, so they watched him closely to see if he would heal on the Sabbath. 8 But Jesus knew what they were thinking and said to the man with the shriveled hand, “Get up and stand in front of everyone.” So he got up and stood there.
9 Then Jesus said to them, “I ask you, which is lawful on the Sabbath: to do good or to do evil, to save life or to destroy it?” 10 ¶ He looked around at them all, and then said to the man, “Stretch out your hand.” He did so, and his hand was completely restored. 11 But the Pharisees and the teachers of the law were furious and began to discuss with one another what they might do to Jesus.
8 “Remember the Sabbath day by keeping 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, neither you, nor your son or daughter, nor your male or female servant, nor your animals, nor any foreigner residing in your towns. 11 For in six days the LORD made the heavens and the earth, the sea, and all that is in them, but he rested on the seventh day. Therefore the LORD blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy.
“Why was this so important?” you ask. “Whom am I hurting, if I work on the Sabbath day?” I think you may to think for a moment about your last question. If you look at the rest of the Ten Commandments, you will see that there are other ones too that forbid doing things that don’t appear to “hurt” anyone. For example, the three that precede the Sabbath command: (1) having any god other than the Lord God, (2) making an idol and worshiping any god, and (3) using the name of God irreverently, such as in anger or frustration. I think you will admit that these do not seem to “hurt” anyone. Yet they offend the Lord God.
Although v. 11 relates the institution of the Sabbath to God’s own ceasing from his work of Creation after six days, the first recorded instances where he required his people to observe it come during the wanderings of Israel from Egypt to the Promised Land, under the leadership of Moses. Not only was the Sabbath observance required in the laws given through Moses at Mount Sinai, but the first infraction of the Sabbath occurred during those wanderings and its punishment was severe: execution (Numbers 15:32-36)!
Throughout the rest of the Old Testament, down to the end of the Babylonian Exile, we hear relatively little about the Sabbath observance in Israel. But by the time of Jesus, Sabbath observance—together with circumcision of Jewish males and the observance of kosher dietary laws—became one of the strictest hallmarks of being a Jew in the midst of a Roman or Greek world. Although there were important religious differences between Jewish groups such as Pharisees, Sadducees, Herodians, Zealots and Essenes, they were all united in the necessity of observing these key commandments. Thus, for not only religious but also nationalistic reasons, it became supremely important to enforce these key requirements on all Jews, especially Jewish men. For Jesus, then, as the influential leader of a new and rapidly growing religious group to relax one of these commands was scandalous, not to say dangerous and subversive.
The incident that triggered the confrontation of Jesus by some Pharisees would seem innocent to you or me. Together with his disciples—that is, the smaller, core group of his companions—Jesus was walking through a field of ripened grain on the Sabbath. He and his disciples were hungry; so as they walked his disciples plucked random heads of grain, rubbed them between their palms to loosen the grain from the husks (sort of like shelling a peanut), and ate them. This was not theft. Not only was the amount of grain involved trivially small, but the law of Moses explicitly permitted this privilege to poor people (Leviticus 19:9-10; 23:22; and Ruth chapter 2). No, the issue was that one should not “work” on the Sabbath. Among the specific actions that rabbinic law in Jesus’ day defined as “work” were harvesting (thus, the disciples' plucking the grains) and milling (their rubbing the grain heads between the palms). So according to their interpretation, Jesus’ disciples had violated at least two of the Sabbath laws.
As a learned rabbi, Jesus could have sought to disprove that his disciples had violated any law of God. After all, the definition of what constituted “work” in violation of the law of Moses was itself debatable. But instead, Jesus allowed their premise and proceeded instead to meet the core issue head on. His counter argument was this: There is something superior to the law of Moses, something that allows it to be broken without guilt. That something is the presence of God’s chosen messiah and king and what he permits to his own companions. For this reason, Jesus cites an instance in the life of David, even before he became the recognized king, during the time when many viewed him as an impostor! Do you see the analogy here? Jesus was still not recognized by many as God’s chosen king and Son. At the time of the cited incident, David had been secretly anointed king (1 Samuel 16:1-13), but was fleeing King Saul, who was jealous of him and sought to kill him. Being hungry together with his companions, he ate the sacred loaves from the altar table in the holy sanctuary of God. In the description of the incident in 1 Samuel 21:1-9, it was the high priest Ahimelech who retrieved the loaves and gave them to David, but in his words to the Pharisees, Jesus seems to want to portray David’s prerogative even stronger by describing him as entering the holy place himself and taking the loaves. In 1 Samuel, David is never censured for receiving and eating the sacred loaves reserved for the priests, which seems to imply that what he did on this occasion was not wrong in God's eyes. It may be inferred that the right to do so was connected with David’s own anointed status. And Jesus goes on to say that this allowed him also to give the food also to his companions. This led to the punch line: “Even so, the Son of Man is Lord of the Sabbath.” The “Son of Man” was Jesus’ own term for himself, used everywhere in the gospels. So he is not referring to some other person. It was a bold claim: Jesus was putting himself—and only himself—in the same category as King David, God’s chosen anointed King, with rights that others—including the Pharisees—did not possess, even the right to contravene the very laws of God issued on Mt. Sinai!
But notice that this King does not violate God’s law arbitrarily or for selfish reasons: he does not murder, steal, or defraud. Instead, he feeds his hungry companions who with him are busy meeting the needs of the poor and oppressed around him. And in a final example of his willingness to contravene the Sabbath law in order to perform his earthly mission, in verses 6-11 he healed a man’s shriveled hand in their very presence, asking them, “Which is lawful to do on the Sabbath: a king act or an unkind one, a good or an evil one?”
Today it is no longer a matter of public policy in the United States, as it once was, to discourage working on Sundays. And I am not mounting a campaign to restore previous public policy in this area. But if you ask why God initially gave a command like the Sabbath, I think the answer was that he wanted his people to learn to trust him to provide their needs. Ceasing to work one day in seven was a symbolic way to show to God that you trusted him to care for your needs without your constant toil. In ancient Israel there was also a Sabbath Year, during which farmers left they fields unplowed, and unseeded, and lived on what they had stored from previous six years’ harvests, and from whatever grew wild in the fields. This too was to enforce the lesson of trust, combined with that of the importance of planning. After all, there might come a year of drought and famine; so one always had to think ahead and plan to save resources.
A final, spiritual lesson from the notion of the Sabbath rest has to do with the issue of salvation. According to Jesus and the New Testament, our sins were judged and paid for by Jesus’ death, and we receive forgiveness and eternal life as God’s gift, without working for it. So salvation itself is our Sabbath rest. Have you confessed to God your own need for this forgiveness, and received by your faith in Jesus this Sabbath rest?
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