Jesus, Lord of the Sabbath (Matthew 12:1-14)
Matthew • Sermon • Submitted • Presented • 42:30
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· 16 viewsA message from Kyle Ryan on January 12, 2025.
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Introduction
Introduction
Earlier in our service this morning, our brother Guy read a passage of Scripture for us from Exodus 20:8-11. This reading was in part to shape our time of congregational prayer built into our time of corporate worship. However, this passage in the giving of the fourth commandment in regards to the Sabbath is also the focus of our time together this morning.
As we listened as Exodus 20:8-11 was read to us, we learned that the fourth commandment in teaching on the Sabbath is a day that is to be kept holy, a day in which no work is to be done. This call to Sabbath rest was to follow God’s work of creation. As he created the earth and all that is in it in six days, then on the seventh he rested from his work of creation.
But here in lies the problem, not of the law, but of our human hearts, we begin to wonder what it is that we are forbidden from doing. What counts as work and not work. What is a Sabbath to look like. This is a problem for us, and it was a problem for those in Jesus’ day, particularly that of the Pharisees. The Pharisees being a group of religious leaders who were to be experts of the law. And these Pharisees were known for adding extra walls around the law, including to that of the fourth commandment. They would add restrictions to the people of how many steps they could take, what they could and more importantly could not do, including the preparing of food as it was work.
There are some still who would follow this example of extra biblical restrictions on the Sabbath day in our own time. But that is just one side of the ditch along the narrow way that leads to God’s forever kingdom. The other side of the ditch is to say that in Jesus we don’t need to honor the Sabbath and to throw it away completely. Both ditches are dangerous and deadly.
So the question for us this morning, what do we do with the Sabbath and how does it point us to Jesus? That’s what Matthew 12:1-14, our passage this morning is seeking to instruct us in. Therefore, please turn with me to Matthew 12:1-14 if you are not already there in your Bibles. If you do not have a Bible, there is a Red Bible there in your seat that you can take and turn with us to Matthew 12:1-14, beginning on page #970 in that Bible.
While you are turning there, let me take a moment and get us all up to speed with where we have been. Off and on now for the past year, we have been working our way through the Gospel According to Matthew. A few times we have mentioned throughout our series that the melodic line of Matthew, that is its overarching point is something like this, Jesus is the eternal king who has been given all authority over the heavens and the earth and that all are to obey him. Now, having spent more time in Matthew, learning with you as we go, I might tweak this and say that theme is more something like this: Jesus is God’s forever King who has been given all authority to come and save his people, therefore let us hear and obey him.
And we have been seeing this play out in the Gospel According to Matthew as we have seen Jesus being the one who has come as the Son of David, the Son of Abraham, fulfilling the promises to both of these patriarchs of the faith. We have seen the authority of Jesus in his teaching, in his healings, even his calming of the wind and the seas. We have seen Jesus’ heart of compassion. And as we left off back in November in Matthew 11, we saw that Jesus is one who is gentle and lowly in heart and invites all to come to him and find rest for their weary souls. It is this theme we now pick up as we hear the word of the LORD.
Read Matthew 12:1-14.
Main Idea: Obeying God is not about following rigorous and burdensome rules, it is about rejoicing in Jesus and reflecting his mercy and goodness.
(1) The Superiority of Jesus
(2) The Mercy of Jesus
1. The Superiority of Jesus
1. The Superiority of Jesus
Our section of text begins with the phrase, at that time. This phrase is meant to draw us to the reality that it is not a set time period or even a chronological time period that Matthew is following in his account. Therefore the two events in Matthew 12:1-14 could be on the same Sabbath day or a week apart or even weeks apart.
But Matthew is pulling these events together to show us the heart of the Sabbath according to the Lord of the Sabbath.
Even more so, he is pulling these together for us right after Jesus’ most gracious invitation to those who labor and are heavy laden back there in Matthew 11:28-30. For Matthew here wants us to see the contrast between Jesus and the religious hypocrites of the day, how while Jesus promises rest, the Pharisees burden the people.
Look with me again then at Matthew 12:1.
Now, if this was happening today in our town and we were to see random people passing by in a field and picking grain, we would think what? That they were stealing, that they are taking what is not theirs. For that is how our society functions for better or worse.
However, in more agricultural societies, sojourners and strangers who passed by random fields were allowed to pick grain as they went for their provision of food on their journey. This is true in Jesus’ day and is still true in many other places around the world today in more agricultural societies. For it is not like people in these places can pull into a Kwik Trip and get some yummy cinnamon rolls for breakfast or a pizza to eat on the way to fellowship group.
While this is legal to do according to cultural and Biblical law, an issue arises. Matthew 12:2.
It mattered not to the Pharisees that Jesus’ disciples were hungry. Instead, they were upset at Jesus for allowing his disciples to work on the Sabbath and not keeping their man made rules that went above God’s given law.
The Pharisees were known for being a people who did not like vagueness and liked to ensure extra biblical boundaries were set to be followed. They would set rules for what conversations were allowed, the forbidding of eating with certain people, as their rebuke of Jesus eating with sinners and tax collectors, and in the case of the Sabbath, they would limit the number of steps that could be taken, the food prepared, and certainly anything they deemed as harvesting.
The Pharisees had rules preventing any labor being done in the gathering of harvest. So even as the disciples plucked heads of grain to eat to satisfy their hunger, the Pharisees accused them of harvesting and going above that which was allowed on the Sabbath.
Friends, there are some of you who are like the Pharisees in this, you want exact rules of what is allowed and disallowed. You might be tempted to think here that this is a good thing. But let me quote the great Coach Lee Corso, “Not so fast, my friend.”
Here the Pharisees have missed the heart of God’s law. For they are more worried about outward ceremonial matters than the heart of God’s law, to love God and love one another.
Jesus works to expose their foolish understanding with slighting them three times, twice with have you not read, and a third with if you had known.
First Jesus points the Pharisees to an example from David, Matthew 12:3-4.
Jesus is pointing the Pharisees back to an event recorded in 1 Samuel 21:1-6. An event that took place as David was forced to flee from Saul as Saul sought to kill David out of jealousy. Therefore in his fleeing, he and his men had no time to grab provisions and were hungry. So, they sought refuge in the temple from the priests in search of food. But the only food that was available was the bread of presence, 12 loaves that were put before the LORD according to the law as stated in Leviticus 24:5-9.
This reading referring back to 1 Samuel 21:1-6. A scene that took place as David was forced to flee from Saul. As Jesus states, this bread of presence was not lawful for David to eat, David and the priests knew this. However, the priests in the moment understood the law, that caring for God’s anointed was more important than the ceremonial law in this situation.
Without leaving the Pharisees time to respond, Jesus turns to his second slight against them. Matthew 12:5.
Jesus here is referring to the priests who are serving in the temple on the Sabbath to carry out the sacrificial offerings, any circumcisions, and other matters that would take place in the temple gathering. And yet, they are guiltless in their works from breaking the Sabbath, in fact, they are called to do the very things they are doing.
Two examples have been given here by Jesus of those who by all measures did what the law had forbidden and yet neither is condemned for in both cases the parties were guiltless. But then Jesus adds this, Matthew 12:6.
Jesus makes the declaration that something greater than David and greater than the temple is here, not coming, but is here among them. And this greater is himself.
Increasingly in Matthew’s gospel, Jesus as the greater temple will be a major source of conflict, even at the cross. And yet, it is through the destruction of the temple, his body, that will tear down the curtain separating sinful man from a holy God, giving access to all who come to rest in him by faith.
Therefore, with Jesus being greater than David, greater than the temple, he shows the innocence of his disciples in their actions.
He does this in the following two verses, Matthew 12:7-8.
Jesus makes plain his disciples are guiltless in their taking of grain from the field in their hunger. His authority to declare their guiltlessness lies in who he is as the one who is greater and Lord of the Sabbath. For again Jesus declares here that he is the Son of Man from Daniel 7:13-14 who has received all authority and dominion, including over the Sabbath.
Therefore, he and he alone has the right to interpret what the Sabbath law requires. Which he has done. For again he in the verses we just looked back at, points for at least the second time in his public ministry to Hosea 6:6.
A place where those in Israel’s history are being rebuked for missing the entire point and dealing faithlessly with God.
In his commentary, Douglas Sean O’Donnell helps us out here. He writes:
Even if you bring 10,000 firstborn bulls to the temple to be sacrificed, if you walk over the poor beggar on your way in, don’t think God is pleased with your abundant devotion. [1]
This is precisely what the Pharisees were doing. They were calling for a keeping of the Sabbath rest by walking over those in affliction, or in the case of the disciples, hunger.
But this legalistic view of the law is not what is desired by the LORD of the Sabbath.
To borrow from Charles Spurgeon,
…the Sabbath is not profaned by works of necessity, piety, or mercy; and that we need not care for the sharp speeches of hypercritical formalists who strain the Sabbatic law, and make a bondage of that which was intended to be a season of holy rest. [2]
The Lord of the Sabbath does not seek this kind of gathering where his people are in bondage and burden. He desires mercy as his people gather on the Holy Sabbath.
Beloved, as we gather we are being invited to enter into God’s holy rest together. And though our challenge is not a fear of legalists who restrict our steps or us from plucking grain on the way, we do have our own stumbling blocks.
As we gather as the church, we can miss the call to mercy if we are coming without delight in the Lord of the Sabbath who has poured out his mercy on us. To remember the Sabbath without remembering the Lord of the Sabbath is part of the issue for the Pharisees. Is it an issue for us, even this morning? Have we missed setting our eyes on Jesus and delighting in him who has poured out his mercy upon us by shedding his own blood on the cross? As his body, the better temple, was pierced for our transgressions. A mercy that resulted in the holy curtain separating a holy God and sinful man being torn down, giving access to God by all who come to rest in Jesus!
Beloved, we are to be a people who delight in Jesus who is greater than David and greater than the temple! We need to delight in the merciful King who has come down from heaven to rescue us!
Further application is needed here too. We must learn from the danger of legality here that the Pharisees followed. This legality comes from their poor reading of Scripture, their poor understanding of the things of God. For they missed the glory of God with their poor reading.
Friends, if your Bible reading and Bible study is merely gathering rules of what is allowed or not allowed, your Bible reading is out of a heart of legality. A heart that must be repented of by turning to the God of mercy in asking for help not to see rules, but to see his glory, glory that has been revealed in Jesus!
This can too be aided by learning to read the Bible more fully. That is to read whole books of the Bible, but even to do so more quickly. Often part of our poor readings comes from missing the main point of the Bible. Beloved, you would do well to at times take a book of the Bible and read it in its entirety in one sitting. For in doing so you capture not every little detail, but grasp the big picture which is more helpful to understand the whole.
Further application & transition
2. The Mercy of Jesus
2. The Mercy of Jesus
Jesus has just taught the Pharisees that God desires mercy, not sacrifice. And what this looks like is immediately put to the test. Matthew 12:9-10.
Immediately upon making it to the temple to worship, as was Jesus’ custom, he is hit with a question pertaining to the Sabbath and healing. This likely being by the same group who just accused him and his disciples of breaking the Sabbath. Now, if they were asking to genuinely know, it might be a different matter. But it is clear the purpose of their asking Jesus about if it is lawful to heal on the Sabbath is for the purpose of being able to accuse him of being a Sabbath breaker.
But Jesus here turns again to the ignorance of those throwing out accusations. Matthew 12:11.
Jesus appeals to their practical side, showing how they even in their own man made regulations understood the need to do work to rescue an animal in need if it was caught or had fallen into a pit. Their was acceptance to do work in such a case. And because of this, Jesus now makes his point on healing on the Sabbath. Matthew 12:12.
If sheep are thought well enough to rescue and care for on the Sabbath, how much more then should man who is of greater value. And so, to heal on the Sabbath is to rescue and relieve a man or woman of their condition, to give them relief. To do them good is to heal them in this case. And so, Jesus proceeds to do just that. Matthew 12:13.
The Mercy of Jesus is shown in the healing of the man with the withered hand. It is healed for the glory of God in showing the people of what it is that God expects on the Sabbath, for his people to not forsake doing good.
To again borrow from Charles Spurgeon:
By that restored hand, made whole on the sabbath, all men knew that Jesus would work deeds of mercy on the sabbath. Let us pray him to do the same in our assemblies. [3]
Beloved, Jesus worked deeds of mercy on the Sabbath and he continues to do so. Even as we gather Sunday in and Sunday out, God’s ordinary means of grace and mercy are on display. Our corporate gathering as the whole church is God’s ordinary and primary means of his mercy being poured out to teach us and stir us.
But, as we gather, we must understand the nature of our gathering, it is to do spiritual good to one another on the Sabbath day. Now, yes I know the Sabbath in Jesus’ day was on Saturday, not Sunday. But, as Christians, we recognize more that Sunday is our Sabbath day, our day to set aside and focus on the LORD. Therefore, based on what the Lord of the Sabbath has taught us, that the call to Sabbath rest is a call to mercy and doing good, then let us grasp that part of our gathering is to do good towards one another.
Even the very purpose of Hebrews 10 in calling us to not neglect the assembling of ourselves together is for what? For the purpose of stirring one another, that is doing spiritual good to one another that we may keep and hold to the faith together…
Let’s pray.
Endnotes
Endnotes
[1] Douglas Sean O’Donnell, Matthew: Preaching the Word Series (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2013), 317.
[2] C. H. Spurgeon, The Gospel of the Kingdom: A Commentary on the Book of Matthew (London: Passmore and Alabaster, 1893), 86.
C. H. Spurgeon, The Gospel of the Kingdom: A Commentary on the Book of Matthew (London: Passmore and Alabaster, 1893), 87.
Scripture Reading & Prayer
Scripture Reading & Prayer
“Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy. Six days you shall labor, and do all your work, 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. For in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them, and rested on the seventh day. Therefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy.
