Luke 6:1-5
Jesus, Lord Over the Sabbath
Luke continued to present Jesus to the Gentiles as the Lord and
Master. I believe that Luke was listing the Sabbaths on which Jesus
and the Pharisees collided.
Luke 6:1 And it came to pass on the second
sabbath after the first….
Some have worked hard to figure out how the events that Luke was
about to describe might be connected to something that happened
seven days previously. It is difficult since the last reference Luke
made to a Sabbath was in \\#Luke 4:31\\ which would seem to be longer
than a mere seven days ago.
I do not believe Luke was counting literal weeks but events. He was
about to record the second Sabbath event where Jesus’ actions
offended the religious Jews. \\#Luke 6:1-5\\ would be the second
Sabbath "event" after the first Sabbath "event" \\#Luke 4:31-41\\.
Luke would then go on to record the third Sabbath "event" in
\\#Luke 6:6-11\\.
Jesus first offense came when He went to Capernaum. It was on the
Sabbath. He healed Peter’s mother-in-law and then went out to heal
those on the street. There was no record of how the scribes and
Pharisees reacted but Luke is now telling us that they did not like
it. Their view of the Sabbath was that it was holy and Jesus
violated it by healing.
At this event, Jesus attempted to teach the religious leaders a
lesson.
I. Was God’s Law broken?
A. Without even needing to study, let me say NO.
1. How do I know?
2. Because Jesus would not have done it if it was breaking
the Law.
a. Jesus is the God who GAVE the Law. He did not come to
break it.
b. Doing so would not have made Jesus the Lord of
the Sabbath. It would have made Him a sinner on
the Sabbath and He could not have been our Savior.
B. With study, He still not break God’s Law.
1. How do I know?
2. Because we have the Law and can read what it says.
a. As far as I can find, there were only two main
commands for the Sabbath.
(1) Keep the it holy.
Exodus 20:8 Remember the sabbath day, to keep it
holy.
(2) Do not work.
Exodus 34:21 Six days thou shalt work, but on the
seventh day thou shalt rest: in earing time and
in harvest thou shalt rest.
b. The problem was in defining what work really was.
(1) The Jews, in an attempt to make sure the Law was
not broken, wrote volumes upon volumes of
additional laws.
(2) Here are some I found.
it was not lawful for a man to visit his gardens,
"or his fields," on the sabbath day, to see what
they want, or how the fruits grow; for such
walking is to do his own pleasure.”
“he that reaps (on the sabbath day) ever so
little, is guilty (of stoning), and ‘plucking
of ears of corn is a derivative of reaping’”
"it was not lawful to cut a plant, or branch,
or so much as a leaf,"
(John Gill’s Commentary, Matthew 12:2.)
c. The problem with their views is that they were just
guessing.
(1) They did not know God’s mind or purpose in giving
the Law.
(2) And to be honest, they just got it wrong.
(3) The conflicts between Jesus and the Jews over the
Sabbath Day was never as much about breaking
God’s Law as it was about breaking their law.
3. So what is work?
a. First, I need to say that you could not get out of the
bed, put on your sandals, walk, open a door, or
anything else without doing some work.
b. The question is really, "How much work is too much
work?"
c. There is a term in the Bible called "servile" work.
(1) That word is used 12 times in Leviticus and
Numbers and it described the kind of work that
COULD NOT be done on a holy day.
(2) It was never used to describe Sabbath Day work.
(3) Even so, I think it can help us to understand
what was too much work for the Sabbath.
(4) Servile means servant or service work.
(5) One could do what one had to do to live but no
one was to go beyond that.
(6) No cooking, no buying, no selling, no growing, no
planting, no repairing—nothing to build oneself
up either in life or in pleasure.
(7) Instead, the Sabbath Day was to be a day of just
getting by in the world and allowing one’s
spirit to meditate on God.
(8) So a person could pray, worship, listen to Bible
teaching, give Bible teaching, eat what was
prepared, and rest.
4. Did the disciples do servile work by plucking, shucking,
and eating some corn?
a. No. That was no more work than walking to the
kitchen and unwrapping a sandwich.
b. It was a violation of the Jews’ law but not of God’s.
C. \\#3-4\\ However, Jesus’ answer takes us down a different
path.
1. Here, Jesus gave an example of what David and his men did
when they were hungry. (1Samuel 21)
a. By the way, what they did WAS against the Law for two
reasons.
(1) Only a priest could eat the shewbread.
Lev 24:8 Every sabbath he shall set it in order
before the LORD continually, being taken from
the children of Israel by an everlasting
covenant.
9 And it shall be Aaron’s and his sons’; and
they shall eat it in the holy place: for it is
most holy unto him of the offerings of the LORD
made by fire by a perpetual statute.
(2) All of this seemed to be taking place on a
Sabbath Day. \\#Lev 24:5-8\\
1Sam 21:5 And David answered the priest, and
said unto him, Of a truth women have been kept
from us about these three days, since I came
out, and the vessels of the young men are
holy, and the bread is in a manner common, yea,
though it were sanctified THIS DAY in the
vessel.
b. Jesus even acknowledged that what they did was against
the Law.
Luke 6:4 …which it is not lawful to eat but
for the priests alone?
c. But even with these direct violations of the Law,
Jesus seemed to be indicating the transgression was
not laid against these men because they were hungry
and needed to eat.
(1) They had left in haste—no preparation—three
days before.
(2) It is possible that the men had not eaten in
days.
(3) The priest, David, the men who ate, and seemingly
Jesus, all deemed that the men were not
chargeable for removing and eating the bread.
2. What does this mean? I think it means that God did not
give the Law to inflict more pain and suffering upon men.
a. God wanted to be honored on the Sabbath so if you were
lazy and did not prepare anything to eat, you could
do without.
b. But if true pain and suffering was involved, it
appears as though Jesus was saying, it is not sin.
c. In fact, Matthew’s account of the same incident
records another statement Jesus made at that time.
Mt 12:7 But if ye had known what this meaneth,
I will have mercy, and not sacrifice, ye would
not have condemned the guiltless.
3. Interestingly, this does not directly apply to the
what the disciples did for they were not that hungry.
4. Instead, Jesus was teaching a completely different lesson
about the Sabbath. What was it?
II. Jesus was teaching them that He was the true Lord who knew what
the Sabbath was about.
Luke 6:5 And he said unto them, That the Son of
man is Lord also of the sabbath.
A. The Jews, perhaps with good intentions, had sought to clarify
what work was and was not allowed by God on the Sabbath Day.
B. They only had one problem.
1. They did not know.
2. They did not understand God’s purpose in His commands and
so could not accomplish their noble purpose.
3. Instead, they became the task masters of their own law,
imposing it upon others.
4. And they had done that for 1,000 years.
C. Then God came in flesh.
1. Jesus is God in the flesh and for the first time ever,
someone could ask God what He meant to happen with the
Laws He had given.
2. But no one did. Instead, man sought to impose his laws on
God.
D. And so God taught man a truth about the Law.
1. Jesus stated that He was the Lord of the Sabbath Day, not
the scribes and Pharisees.
2. Some have mistaken what Jesus said to mean, "I am God and
I don’t have to obey the Law if I don’t want to."
3. That is SO WRONG!
a. Jesus had come to place Himself UNDER the Law.
Ga 4:4 But when the fulness of the time was
come, God sent forth his Son, made of a woman,
made under the law,
b. Jesus did have to keep it. Anything else would be
sin.
c. Jesus did not come to give us an example of special
privilege but of spiritual power!
4. What Jesus meant by the statement was that He—and He
alone—knew the purpose of the Law. He—and He alone—
understood it and could use it to accomplish God’s will.
5. This was Jesus telling the religious leaders that they
needed to come to Him for understanding and not expect
Him to come to them.
Indeed, Jesus is Lord—not just of the Sabbath Day but of all the Law,
and the beauty is that although He knows all of our shortcomings, He
is still willing to pay the price for the transgressions.
Come to Him today!
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