Dennis Tuuri

# Sermon Transcript – Pastor Dennis Tuuri, 1984-2016

I actually saw the first bit of this story a couple weeks ago and then I watched the news a couple of nights ago—I believe it was Friday night—and I saw more national coverage on the national news about some demonstrations going on in Israel. Apparently the more Orthodox Jewish people in Israel are now getting very upset about the violation of the Sabbath in Israel. And this last week there was an actual demonstration.

People were arrested. It was a strange scene to have these Orthodox men with the hats and the black coats and the long hair on the sides—you know, because they can’t cut the sides of their hair or anything—and the long beards of course, being hustled off by policemen in uniforms and helmets for demonstrating against, in this case, the opening of a theater. Theaters were showing movies on the Sabbath—a violation of the Sabbath law clearly.

And it’s quite a controversy right now in the nation of Israel. At one time it was a controversy in America too—the blue laws, the Sabbath closing laws that were here. This country has since resolved that conflict. At the close of our talk today, we’ll discuss the manner in which that was resolved and some of the implications for ourselves and our communities as well.

Last week, we spoke about the eighth day prefigurement of the New Covenant Sabbath and we went through an extended series of Old Testament passages to demonstrate by three different methods how God prefigured an eighth day Sabbath in the New Covenant. And we said that isn’t proof for the change of the Sabbath day from the seventh day to the eighth day, or from Saturday to Sunday. But it was compelling evidence to look for something like that.

If you remember last week, we talked about how circumcision—death to life ceremony of the old covenant—as well as the cleansing of lepers, for instance, show that the cleansing of the leper and the circumcision was done on the eighth day and that was like new life, a new creation on the basis of God’s almighty work. El Shaddai, the mighty one who can perform these things even when Abraham and Sarah could not have a child. God gave them a child and gave them new names to indicate the new creation inherent in that.

We looked at the Old Testament festivals themselves, the three required ones where men had to go up to Jerusalem three times a year and showed how those also had eighth day elements to them. The day after the Sabbath was a special day in each of those occurrences. We talked about the agricultural festivals—the first one being where you would wave a sheaf of grain before God, a single sheath as the very first of the first fruits as it were. And that waving was done on the day following the Sabbath. It was an eighth day occurrence.

And then Pentecost, which was seven Sabbaths later plus one—fifty days. Pentecost was when you would bring two loaves of bread on Pentecost and present those before God. And that’s kind of emblematic of the first fruits of the harvest coming in at that point in time. And so that also was a day after the Sabbath, after seven Sabbaths, and on the eighth day you’d bring up these two loaves before God.

And then finally at the feast of tabernacles where people would tabernacle before God—that symbolized the harvest being completed—they would come to Jerusalem and live in tabernacles or tents or shelters for seven days. And on the eighth day to conclude the whole sabbatical yearly cycle, they would come out of the tabernacles and rejoice before God. And again, all those three required festivals showed an element of the eighth day coming to new covenant fulfillment of everything that was the shadow in the old covenant.

And so we talked about the importance of the eighth day in the old covenant. Today we’re going to move forward now from the old covenant—where we spent most of the last five weeks or so dealing with the Sabbath—and we’re going to begin a New Covenant investigation of the Sabbath in the New Testament. And it’s proper to begin with the Gospels and it’s certainly proper then to begin with our Lord’s attitude toward the Sabbath. What did he do? And we’re going to look at a passage of scripture this morning that many people believe that in this passage he abolished the Sabbath and said how stupid it was.

We want to ask the question this morning: Did he abolish the Sabbath or did he keep the Sabbath? And if he kept the Sabbath, what implications does that hold for us as well?

I didn’t plan it this way, but the outline that you have in front of you—the three points we’re going to talk about—follows how Jesus first defended his actions against the accusers. Second, how he taught the true meaning of the biblical Sabbath. And third, how he declared his authority over the Sabbath and overall time. Therefore, it really follows the prophet, priest, and king motif, if you want to look at it that way, although in a slightly rearranged order.

The defense of his actions against accusations would be a guarding sort of action—which we’ve talked about in the past—a priestly action on the part of Christ. Christ is the true priest defending the true observance of the Sabbath. Secondly, Christ is the true prophet who taught the true meaning of the biblical Sabbath. He was the prophet that all other prophets prefigured in the old covenant. And third, as king of kings, Jesus declared his lordship or dominion over the Sabbath day itself.

So we’ll go through these three elements of our Lord’s attitude and actions toward the Sabbath day.

## The Defense Against Accusation

First, our Lord defended his actions against the accusations of those people who accused him and his disciples of Sabbath breaking. This is found in the first six verses. A little bit of background here might be helpful. You might ask: Why were he and his disciples wandering through this field of grain, eating these kernels of wheat? It wasn’t corn. You realize it would have been quite difficult to walk through a cornfield and pluck out a little kernel of corn. In the King James version, the word “corn” really indicates for us wheat.

So they’re actually eating heads of wheat here as they walk through this field. Why are they doing that at all? I mean, you’d think they would just go home and eat, right?

Well, the background of this is in chapters ten and eleven, which leads up to Matthew 12. In Matthew 10, Jesus is giving instructions to the twelve disciples to go out preaching the gospel of the kingdom. And he gives them a whole chapter worth of instructions. And then in Matthew 11, those instructions are now over. It says in the first verse that Jesus then departs to teach and preach in the various cities. So the context of Matthew 12 is that Jesus and his disciples are on a mission. They’re out there preaching the gospel and because they’re doing that, they are away from their homes and they’re away from the normal methods whereby they would get food.

And this was the reason for the hunger. Now the Jews in the rabbinic writings were supposed to have three meals available in their homes in case people came by visiting or people were traveling and were out of town that week and so away from their home on the Sabbath couldn’t eat. But apparently in this particular case, it’s quite likely that Jesus that day—in fact I would say it’s a certainty—that Jesus that day visited the synagogue. The scriptures tell us in other places that his habit or his custom—his law, another way to translate that word—was that on the Sabbath he went to the synagogues.

So it’s quite likely that this incident happened on his way back from the synagogue, trying to find a place of rest and not having been invited any place to stay by people at the synagogue or to eat. And so they didn’t have anybody to feed them and so they were walking, looking for rest, at the same time plucking off some of these heads of wheat to eat. And well, that’s going to be important for a point here in a couple of minutes. So remember that they were hungry because people hadn’t fed them.

One other important part of this background or the context for this whole incident: you must realize that the Pharisees, the Jews at the time of Christ, did not have a given set of Sabbath regulations that everybody agreed on. First of all, you had various groups—Sadducees and others—and the Pharisees were a separate group from them. But even amongst the Pharisees themselves, who were the most strict or most stringent in interpretation of the scriptures, more orthodox in that sense—even among the Pharisees themselves, there were differences of opinion.

And specifically at the time of our Lord, there were two basic schools: Shammai and Hillel. And Shammai, which was the more stringent or burdensome system, was the one that was more common at this particular part of Israel’s history. After AD 70 and the destruction of the temple, the destruction of the system, people tended to blame that on those strict regulations. And so the Pharisaical school of Hillel, the more lenient school, became the predominant thought system. But the point is that not everybody agreed on what these Sabbath regulations were.

Now, that’s important: none of the activities that the disciples did here—in terms of taking heads off, rubbing the shaft away from them, and then eating the kernels—none of this activity was clearly forbidden in the thirty-nine, I believe there were thirty-nine specific actions that were prohibited, or thirty-nine specific definitions in rabbinic writings as to what work was and that you couldn’t do on the Sabbath. And none of these actions in and of themselves met up with one of those thirty-nine restrictions. So there was really no reason to believe that they were breaking the Sabbath at all, even according to the Pharisaical interpretations.

And the thirty-nine actions which declared what was prohibited—many commentators, Jewish commentators, have looked back at this and these incidents including this one and said, “What’s the big deal? Why were these guys bugging Jesus?” Because Jesus wasn’t really breaking any of the rabbinic interpretations either.

Plus you have to recognize that they understood—the rabbinic writings understood—that the various regulations that they had come up with on Sabbath regulations were really tenuous in terms of applying to the work and rest that God had commanded for the Sabbath. There was a saying in the rabbinic writings that “the rabbinic interpretations on the Sabbath are as a mountain hanging upon a thread”—a small thread or a string. The interpretations were the mountain, the word of God in terms of what it taught about what work was or wasn’t was the string. Very few verses in the Old Testament give us any idea of what work may or may not have been considered. But they had this tremendous bunch of regulations by which they interpreted.

Having recognized that, there was a principle in Pharisaical interpretations of scripture that if there was doubt, you didn’t make an accusation against the person. If the different groups of Pharisees didn’t agree amongst themselves about a particular action, you wouldn’t accuse them. If there was double doubt, you certainly wouldn’t accuse them. And in this specific case, there was double doubt. That was a technical rabbinic term.

And that double doubt had first to do with whether they had worked at all during the plucking of these heads of grain and eating them. And the second area of doubt was: what if it was a necessary work? The rabbis were agreed that for the sake of the health of a person, you could violate the Sabbath. One of the rabbis at that particular period of time said that if a man had a sore throat, even though you never could tell it might lead to a death situation, you had to secure the sore throat. It was okay to do that, to mix the compound and give it to him on the Sabbath.

So works of necessity were recognized even in the Pharisaical rabbinic interpretations being used by the Pharisees at the time. So there was double doubt here: Was it work? Was it a work of necessity? We don’t know either way. It could have been either thing, right? It might not have been work. If it was work, it might have been a work of necessity. So why did they accuse him? They were being inconsistent with their own principles in accusing Jesus Christ. And so that’s important to have as a backdrop to all of this.

Now, first of all, our Lord really did not need to defend his actions or the actions of his disciples, but he did. He could have just dismissed it and said, “You know, you guys are out to lunch.” He could have just ignored them or something. Or he could have just pointed them back to their own rabbinic interpretations. He didn’t do that. He delivered a fairly substantial piece here of exegesis of what the Sabbath is. It’s important for people who read the Bible to understand this. Jesus has taken the time to record this in holy writ.

There were seven healing actions of Jesus Christ on the Sabbath and they occupy a good deal of the gospels. And so Jesus’s interpretation of the Sabbath is important to us for some reason. And that, by the way, we’ll make a point of this later on, but that is good reason to believe the Sabbath did not become abolished by what Jesus did. Why would he have spent so much time giving a correct understanding and teaching on the Sabbath if it was just going to end in a year or two?

But Jesus did defend himself and the first method whereby Jesus defended himself against the rabbinic interpretations and the accusations here was by asserting that the violation of the ideal Sabbath rest was permissible because of necessity. Jesus points them back to David and he says that David did something unlawful. He ate the bread of the presence. He ate one of the twelve loaves.

I’ve given you some references—Leviticus 24:5-9—for the laws regarding that bread that David ate. But just to sum it up, there would be these twelve loaves baked and apparently they had to be baked every Sabbath day and they had to be fresh and hot when placed before the Lord, commemorating the twelve tribes of Israel before God. And then the old loaves would be taken off on that Sabbath day and the priests would be told to eat them in a holy place. Only the priests could eat them—holy bread in a holy place, okay? And the Sabbath which represented a holy sort of environment as well.

Jesus said David did violate that law. And so in a way, the first thing Jesus did was to radicalize the whole idea of the Sabbath. Their interpretations didn’t forbid what his disciples did. But he said, at least if you understand the connection here to the Davidic actions: he said, “Yeah, there is a sense in which the Sabbath may have been violated here. God’s ideal rest is a total contemplation based upon God and not even having to go out and even pluck a few heads of grain for your food.”

But that ideal rest is tempered by the need to eat. The same way that the ideal use of the holy loaves—it was permissible for David to break into that holy loaf as it were and to consume part of it because him and his men were hungry. Okay?

And so Jesus said that just as the holy bread can be eaten by David and his men because of necessity and because of hunger, then part of the Sabbath time could be consumed or used as it were by Jesus and his disciples because they were hungry.

So the first thing that Jesus did here was say it’s a permissible action because it’s a work of necessity. It’s to relieve hunger and life then can be seen as having precedence over cult—and “cult” in the sense of those all those regulations dealing with the specific group of Israel under the old covenant. Life has precedence over that whole cultic system.

The second thing Jesus went on to talk about was that the violation of the ideal Sabbath rest was permissible because of service. The next thing he talks about—after he talks about David and how they ate the holy bread and it was permissible for them to do so because they were hungry—he then goes on to say, “Don’t you know the priests profane the Sabbath?” He’s again saying there is a profanation. There’s a violation of the ideal Sabbath that when the priests have to work in this way, and yet they’re required by God’s law, according to the cultus itself—now according to the sacrificial system itself—they’re required to break Sabbath, profane the Sabbath because of their service.

And so it’s okay to break the Sabbath when you’re serving. Now, why did Jesus say that? It doesn’t seem like he’s serving out there in the wheat field just going along eating. But remember: Jesus and his men were on a mission from God. I know Howard L. likes that line out of the Blues Brothers movie, you know, “We’re on a mission from God.” Well, Jesus and his disciples really were on a mission from God.

And because they’re on a mission from God, they were serving God the same way the priests served the nation of Israel by offering sacrifices on the Sabbath. Remember from our studies in the last few weeks: on the Sabbath, there was a double offering. The priest had to work twice as hard in terms of the offering itself. He had to cook this bread, too. And he had to change this bread in the temple. There’s a lot more work on the Sabbath for the priest.

And the Sabbath was to be seen then as an arena of service or ministering to the needs of people and specifically to their spiritual needs. So Jesus and his disciples were out on this mission from God serving the people. And that led to their hunger.

So he said, “This is okay because we’re on a mission from God. We’re serving. It’s because we’re serving that we end up with no food here on the Sabbath. And so it’s okay to eat this wheat, this bread before it’s cooked, as it were.”

He said first, by means of the illustration of David, that life has precedence over cult. Secondly, he says from the temple that cult has precedence over Sabbath. And so by means of a double system of logic there, life itself has precedence over Sabbath. So he gives them at least several different lines of thought here as to why it’s okay, why they were doing what they were doing.

Now remember here: he is relying upon Old Testament evidences of the validity of his sabbatical actions. He’s not saying, “Well, that was okay under the old covenant but it’s okay now because I’m Lord of the Sabbath.” That’s not what he’s doing at all. He points to the very old covenant itself and says the old covenant required these sort of actions under these sort of circumstances. He affirms sabbatical teachings. And then we’ll get to that in a little bit, but he extends it and says what it really meant under the old covenant.

The third line of evidence that he uses to say that his actions and the actions of his disciples are okay is that the accusers are hypocrites and therefore not eligible to press charges. Now, that isn’t in this specific account. Throughout this talk, I should have mentioned this earlier, we’ll be looking at the other Sabbath healings of Jesus as well. There, as I said, there were seven of them, and we’ll look at several of those as we go through this account and he is always in this conflict situation with the same group, at least the same members of this religious order of Pharisees who are trying to accuse him of Sabbath breaking.

Specifically in Mark 3, verses 1-6, we have the healing of the man with the withered hand. And there’s a parallel account in Luke 6. But back in Matthew 12, where we started—after this incident—there’s immediately another incident in which he heals a man with a withered hand. And in verse 11 of that healing, he says to him: “What man shall there be among you that shall have one sheep and if it fall into a pit on the Sabbath day, will he not lay hold on it and lift it out?”

This healing is in Matthew 12:11. Immediately after the cornfield incident, there’s a man with a withered hand, which is repeated in Mark 3 and Luke 6. But in any event, Jesus, in defending his actions in terms of healing the man with the withered hand, says: if a sheep falls into a pit, you’re going to pull it out, right?

Well, the interesting thing is that no, they wouldn’t according to their laws. The rabbinic interpretation that he was refuting now said specifically: no, you couldn’t do that. You couldn’t pull an animal out of the pit. So why was he saying this? If their own—if he knew that he must have known that the rabbinic interpretation at the time was you could not do this action.

Well, the answer is given to us in the healing of the crippled woman in Luke 13. In Luke 13, he heals a crippled woman in the synagogue actually, right? There’s a ruler of the synagogue there. He heals this crippled woman. The ruler of the synagogue says, “You shouldn’t come here to be healed on the Sabbath. There’s six days to be healed. Get out of here on the Sabbath. You don’t want anybody healing people on the Sabbath. That’s work.”

Jesus answers the ruler of the synagogue in Luke 13:15 and he says, “Thou hypocrite, does not each one of you—each one of you Pharisaical rabbis and rulers of these synagogues—doesn’t each one of you on the Sabbath loose his ox or his ass from the stall and lead him away to watering?” Not only would they have pulled their single sheep out because they’re interested in the financial value of that sheep, he said they would even—it doesn’t take that much to do work on the Sabbath. They’ll lead the sheep away to watering so that the sheep won’t be diminished in economic value.

So he says, “Yeah, your own interpretations may be violated by pulling a sheep out of the pit, but you do it anyway. You’re a hypocrite. You pull—you actually lead the sheep out to watering.”

And so the third line of reasoning to the defense of his actions—the actions of his disciples—was the hypocrisy of the Pharisees.

Now in these incidents of Sabbath healings, we see two things really—the two areas of attack that our Lord continually used against the Pharisees. One was against their man-made law, and two was against their hypocrisy as well. And both those things are indicated in the passage we just looked at.

So he defended his actions, but he went farther than a simple defense of his own actions by pointing back to the old covenant scriptures and saying this is legitimate Sabbath activity. He went on then, being the true prophet of God, having guarded now the Sabbath that God had laid down, to teach the meaning of the true biblical Sabbath.

## Teaching the True Meaning of the Sabbath

And he reads in Matthew 12, in our passage in verse 7: “If ye had known what this meant, I will have mercy and not sacrifice, you would not have condemned the guiltless.” He says they’re guiltless. Because of these various reasons. And if they would have understood what this scripture meant—and this scripture, he’s quoting from Hosea 6:6. “I will have mercy and not sacrifice. Compassion is opposed to sacrifice. You would not have condemned the guiltless.”

And so Jesus goes on then to tell them first of all that in the true biblical Sabbath, mercy has priority over sacrifice.

If they understood this, what would they have done in this particular situation? They could have avoided the situation altogether. Remember we said before that what’s happening here is he’s out of town and nobody’s invited him over to eat. Well, if they would have understood the meaning of the biblical Sabbath, they would have been looking for people like Jesus who was away from home and hungry to invite to their home and to demonstrate compassion for them, even if it required preparation of some work to feed them on that day.

This is a thinly veiled insult to them to say, “What were you guys doing when we were hungry? You should have been helping us. You should have been demonstrating compassion toward a stranger in your area.”

And we know the biblical references are many that refer to the obligation of the covenant community to extend grace to those who are strangers in the area and at disadvantage. Therefore, because of this, Jesus taught that the true Sabbath was one of compassion over even the works of sacrifice or the specific letter of the law as it were.

Remember that the Mosaic Sabbath itself was specifically based upon redemption. It called upon the people to recognize, to remember back that God had delivered them from Egypt, right? And then it tells them a specific action to do right in the decalogue in Deuteronomy 5. It says, “Because I released you, you turn around and release your people on this day. Don’t have your people working for you.” It wasn’t like you were supposed to hold a stick over them and tell them not to work. They don’t want to work, right? It would just be instead of a day of rest too, and you were supposed to give them that day of rest.

The Sabbath wasn’t to be a day characterized by stringency. The Sabbath would be a day characterized by rejoicing and by compassionate acts of people shown to one another.

And I said before that Jesus had that kind of compassion on seven different occurrences. The scriptures say he healed on the Sabbaths. Why is that? Well, the reason I think is that the true biblical Sabbath had now invaded into this Pharisaical hypocritical situation that was going on in the nation of Israel in the person of Jesus Christ. And he was teaching them by his very acts that the Sabbath is a time to extend life, to give compassion and healing and mercy to people, and to be that channel that God had called us to be of the grace that he had shown to us in redemption from Egypt.

Now he showed that to the people around us and loosing them from whatever conditions of bondage they’re in. Jesus Christ had that attitude toward people. He had that kind of compassion because he had ushered in the year of the Lord and we should have that kind of compassion as well on Sunday. We don’t want to get so ingrown that we ignore the spiritual needs and physical needs of those around us.

The scriptures are repeating in the Old Testament with references to the fact that the correct way to observe Sabbath is to extend freedom, to extend end compassion and mercy in the life that God has given to us. Jesus had that attitude. The people that were accusing him did not. They didn’t. We know because they didn’t extend compassion to him as one who was out of town without anything to eat.

And in another incident—as I said before—in the man with the withered hand, an incident that follows this incident, Jesus, after he heals the man with the withered hand, goes on to say that he was grieved because of their hardness of hearts.

Jesus’s attitude toward the Pharisees is one of being grieved over their hardness of hearts. He had compassion even for the Pharisees as it were. He was grieved and sorrowful because of it. Jesus had compassion for the people that was healing. And that attitude then led to action to correct the situation in terms of the healing of people, to bring them into wholeness, and in terms of teaching the Pharisees the real meaning of the Sabbath, to try to remove their hardness of heart.

What was the Pharisees attitude though? Their attitude wasn’t one of compassion. They didn’t say, “Oh, you poor guys, you’re out of town and don’t have anything to eat.” They had a hardness of heart in terms of their attitude. And Jesus says that their actions then demonstrated that hardness of heart because after he heals the man with the withered hand and Jesus rebukes him in this fashion, what do they do on the Sabbath?

Now they leave their encounter with Jesus to go and plot his very death. It tells us that in verse 14: “The Pharisees went out and held a council against him, how they might destroy him.”

What a beautiful picture of the wrong way to observe the Sabbath and the right way to observe the Sabbath. The Pharisees running around accusing people, not being compassionate, not hating people, and actually plotting the death of the man who came to demonstrate the true Sabbath to them. Their hardness of heart and incorrect attitude leads forward to actions of death. Jesus’s correct attitude of compassion and grief, even over the Pharisees, leads him to giving them life through the correct teaching and then healing the people also brought to him.

His compassion was such that he didn’t want to say, “Let’s wait another day before we heal you here.” He had encountered them on the Sabbath. He healed them on the Sabbath. He had the correct attitude of compassion and as a result his works demonstrated the true meaning of biblical Sabbath—which is that mercy has priority over sacrifice. And that’s why he quoted Hosea 6:6 to them.

The Sabbath was all about the gracious extension of life on the basis of God graciously giving us life and Jesus did that.

Secondly, he restored the true meaning of the biblical Sabbath and he said that the true Sabbath of God is a delight to man. In Mark 2:27, in a parallel account to this Matthew 12 passage of going through the cornfields, in Mark 2:27 there’s a piece of information that isn’t in Matthew 12. In Mark 2:27, Jesus says—before he declares his lordship over the Sabbath—he says: “The Sabbath was made for man and not man for the Sabbath.”

And we’ve talked about that verse before. He says “man” there and not “Israelite.” And he says “made” instead of “given over.” The rabbinic interpretation at the time had—there was a rabbinic saying at that time that God had not given you to the Sabbath. He had given the Sabbath to the Israelite, to the covenant Jew. And Jesus changed two elements of that. It wasn’t just a covenant Jew. It was all of man the Sabbath had been given to. And that it wasn’t given over. It was made for you. It was part of a creation ordinance.

Well, in any event, Jesus in his second teaching of the true Sabbath says the Sabbath should be a delight of man. The Sabbath was made for man. The Sabbath was supposed to be a holiday then based upon this gracious extension of life, the gracious rest of God, and the holiday that it was supposed to usher in then on the basis of—the Sabbath had been perverted into a day of strict observations.

And the Sabbath now, instead of becoming the most joyous day of the week, now became the toughest day of the week. It was harder work to keep the Sabbath than it was to go out in the fields and harvest now, right? Because these Pharisees laying these heavy burdens upon them. And so the very day that had been given to the covenant people as a day of rejoicing, a festive day of holy convocation before God—a holy day, a holiday. You see the connection there?—had been turned into the worst of all the seven work days of the week. Now, they had no Sabbath left to them.

The Sabbath would be delight to man. And we emphasize that every week in this church when reading, we read Isaiah 58. We’re supposed to call the Sabbath a delight. And God will cause us to ride upon the high places of the earth and feed us with the heritage of Jacob, our father. The Sabbath was to be a delight to man, not a burden to man.

Jesus, because of this, brought wholeness to people. He made the Sabbath a day of delight to people. In Luke 4, we’ll read in a couple of minutes here, his proclamation again of the year of Jubilee. But that proclamation of the year of Jubilee in Luke 4 is immediately followed in the text of Luke 4 by two healing incidents, both on the Sabbath. The first one is the healing of the demoniac in the synagogue, a man possessed by demons. And the second healing is the healing of Peter’s mother-in-law from a very high fever, an incapacitating high fever and illness. And Jesus heals them. And it says specifically on the Sabbath.

After his proclamation of the year of Jubilee, he then goes out to make man whole again, to cause him to rejoice in the Sabbath. And that wholeness is demonstrated both by spiritual wholeness in the curing of the demoniac and physical wholeness in the curing of Peter’s mother-in-law. Jesus brought wholeness back to people and joy.

Remember we said last week that Jesus said, “You circumcise a man if the eighth day from his birth happens on the Sabbath.” And that’s right. He said you can mutilate one of whatever it is, one hundred twenty-nine parts of the body—that the Pharisees had decided that there was in the body. You can mutilate one part of that body to cause a man to be in actual health before God and covenant wholeness before God. How come you don’t want me to cure a whole person? I bring back people wholly back to life physically and then spiritually as well. People—Jesus was bringing healing and wholeness on the Sabbath day. That was the best day to demonstrate the healing activities of Jesus, to bring men back to wholeness and to true welfare before God.

Now some people use this verse—that the Sabbath was made for man—to say that man can do anything he wants to on the Sabbath. But remember, when the Bible says it’s for the good of man, only God can really tell us what that good is. And that good is defined by Jesus’s Sabbath actions as being wholeness of body and wholeness of spiritual health as well, not being possessed by demons.

That Sabbath then is to be a delight to man. And that delightfulness that man has in the Sabbath will yield to that joy and delight and redemption that’s been accomplished in Jesus’s Sabbath work. It will yield to service on the part of the people. After Jesus heals Peter’s mother-in-law from her high fever, she immediately gets up and serves him and the disciples. She ministers to them. And so it should be the same with us.

We’re healed on the Sabbath by Jesus. We’re brought back to holiness of life. And that life is given us to serve him and to serve his covenant community. That’s the true meaning of biblical Sabbath.

So Jesus now has done a couple of things. He has indicated the correctness of his actions and his disciples actions on the Sabbath. He has indicated the true content of the biblical Sabbath, and that he was now bringing that true content of biblical Sabbath into reality in their very presence.

## Declaring Authority Over the Sabbath

And now Jesus does one more thing and that’s to declare his authority over the Sabbath. If Jesus had stopped where we stop right now—without going on to declare his authority over the Sabbath—if Jesus had simply reaffirmed biblical old covenant Sabbath, the importance of its observance correctly and the joy that observance brings—if he had stopped right there, how can you account for the actions of his disciples?

We’ll look at passages next week from the epistles that say that you’re not supposed to keep that Sabbath anymore. Why would they do that? If Jesus spent all this time reaffirming biblical old covenant Sabbath and left it there, why would the disciples go beyond that? Well, he didn’t do that. Jesus went on to declare his authority over times and over the Sabbath itself.

As I said before, he spent a lot of time teaching about true Sabbath observance. And if he was going to abolish the Sabbath, he wouldn’t have done that just for a year or two with the correct Sabbath observance on the part of his disciples. It wouldn’t be that important for us to take that much of the scriptures to tell us about the gospels—to tell us about how to observe the Sabbath that we no longer ought to keep.

But Jesus does a couple of other things. We talked about a rudimentary explanation of these examples he gives in this passage in Matthew 12. But let’s look back at some of those things now with a little more depth. Jesus, when he declared, and he used the examples of David and the temple in terms of the correctness of his actions, I believe was saying something more than just using any old instrument out of the Old Testament. He chose two instances specifically to declare that they were going to find their fulfillment in him.

First of all, Jesus is the greater David. Look at the parallels between what he used in terms of David and his men eating the showbread. David and his men eating bread in a holy place, okay—in holy bread. Jesus and his men eating wheat in a holy day. The parallels are pretty obvious, but we know that Jesus is the greater son of David. Something greater than David has now been brought to pass in the coming of Jesus Christ. If it was okay for David to do that, Jesus is saying it’s certainly okay if I do it because I’m the greater David.

He correlated himself to David and said I am the greater David and therefore it’s okay to do these things. Think about the implications now. David and his men had become priests in a sense, hadn’t they? They could eat the bread only the priests could. If the action had been legitimatized somehow, David in a sense was taking the role of the priest. Well, now Jesus and his men on a holy mission from God were the priests and they were eating that holy bread in holy time. They were eating the bread in the field preparing that meal.

Now this is an important teaching in the New Testament appearances of Jesus Christ after his resurrection. He eats with his disciples. Remember, on the road to Emmaus, two men walking along, Jesus meets them. They don’t know who he is. They get to their destination. He sits down to break bread with them. And when he breaks bread with the men, then their eyes are open. They recognize it’s Jesus. They go back then and tell the other disciples. Jesus shortly thereafter, on that same evening, the evening of his resurrection, goes and meets with those disciples behind locked doors and he eats with them again.

In Acts 10:41, we’re specifically told that God raised up Jesus and he appeared to us. The writer of this portion of Acts says he appeared to us who ate and drank with him after he had risen from the dead. In Acts 10, we’re told that not only did Jesus eat with us in terms of breaking of bread, he also had some fish with him also that evening. But he ate and drank with us. That’s in Acts 10, verse 41. Peter then is giving a sermon and defending his preaching to the Gentiles. And in that defense, he says that God raised up Jesus and we ate and drank with Jesus after he had been resurrected. And that’s just what happened on the first day of the resurrection—the eighth day of the week, now the Sunday as it were, the new Sabbath, is what our contention is.

We’ll continue to demonstrate that over the next few weeks. Jesus on that first new Sabbath, as it were, of his resurrection, meets with his men to eat with them, to eat and drink. And so Jesus then, in illustrating that he is now the greater David, shows what’s going to happen when he returns in the fullness of the Sabbath, the new Sabbath, on the resurrection.

The early church then—I think this is why the early church, and Reverend Chilton was here a couple weeks ago and he talks about this a lot. They’ve written about it a lot—that really the primary focus of the Sabbath, the new Christian Lord’s day meetings of the church was the supper itself, because that’s when Jesus had manifested himself to them both to the disciples at Emmaus and then meeting with them that evening as well, behind locked doors. He manifested himself by eating with them, by having a meal with them.

And so Jesus here is pointing to him being the greater David. And therefore, he’s pointing to something fulfilled in new covenant time that was prefigured in old covenant time.

Secondly, Jesus says that he’s the greater temple. In verse 6, Jesus says—after he says, well, you know, the priest can minister in the temple. He says verse 6: “But I say unto you that in this place is one greater than the temple.” There’s one greater than the temple here. Who was it? It was Jesus Christ. He said that if you tear down this temple, I’ll raise it up in three days. Jesus was the true temple that the shadow of the old temple pointed toward. He was the true David that the shadow of the old covenant David pointed toward—the true king, the true high priest now, right? And so Jesus says that he’s the true temple.

The standing temple then was to be seen as a shadow of the reality that had now come in Jesus Christ. He was now the one that would introduce and produce the final and total expiation of sin. And having accomplished that, God would now indwell the temple of Jesus Christ, the new temple which he creates—which is his church itself. God indwells us.

Jesus said he’s the new temple. And third, Jesus said that he was the greater Moses. This is a little indirect here, but Jesus goes on to say the son of man is lord of the Sabbath. In verse 8, now Moses had given the Mosaic Sabbath to the old covenant people. And that Sabbath was based upon a fixed yearly date. Jesus, when he says that the son of man is lord of the Sabbath, and when he talks about David and the temple, what he’s doing is he’s shifting the whole discussion away from a consideration of the day itself.

He’s now causing the Pharisees to deal with him as a person. If he’s lord of the Sabbath, whatever he says about the Sabbath is okay, it’s right, because he’s the one who’s in charge of the whole thing, right? He’s the one that gave it and he’s the one that interprets it for man. Jesus was shifting the whole sabbatical discussion about whether or not the rabbinic interpretations have been violated to a discussion of his own person.

He’s saying, “I’ve intruded now into true Sabbath and I brought true Sabbath. You got to deal with me. I’m the greater David. I’m the final temple and I’m the Lord of this Sabbath. I’m the greater Moses as well.”

Now, it’s interesting that all three of the synoptic gospels—the context for this story that occurs in the cornfield when Jesus says he’s Lord of the Sabbath is very interesting. In Matthew, in the specific verses we’re looking at, remember we said it’s a context here of three chapters. Immediately before this, Jesus in Matthew 11, verse 28 says, “Come all to me—all ye that labor and are heavy laden—and I’ll give you rest.” That’s just what he does a few verses later. He gives them a true understanding of biblical Sabbath. And rest is found in Jesus Christ. The true Sabbath as it were—the true rest that’s been given to man in the person of Jesus Christ. They were heavy laden. And part of that heavy-ladenness was all this rabbinic extra laws that they had put upon the people. But Jesus gave them true rest.

The two synoptic gospels in Mark and Luke that give us the same account of the cornfield—in both those two, this incident is preceded by the teaching of Jesus that with new wine, new wineskins have to occur as well. That the old wineskins will burst. He says new wine means new wineskins. He then goes on immediately after that in Mark and Luke to talk about the incident of this cornfield. And Jesus is saying new Lord of the Sabbath, new David, new temple. What does it mean? New wineskins. It’s strong evidence that he was saying the Sabbath had been brought to completion and fulfillment in the greater David, the greater temple, and the greater Moses—the greater lawgiver—had now to be changed as well.

That Sabbath was no longer contained in the seventh day, the Saturday that they were at that time observing. Now, in this context, I mentioned before that the Luke 4 passage and how there were two specific healings of the Sabbath in Luke 4—spiritual and physical. And what are those preceded by? Which the context of them? It’s Jesus’s declaration in Luke 4 of the year of Jubilee having been ushered in by him. The end of the sabbatical cycle of years as it were—the fiftieth year ushered in by Jesus Christ. He says now that year has come to pass and that this is all being brought to fulfillment.

Now Jesus said, “The spirit of the Lord is upon me because he hath anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor. He has sent me to heal the brokenhearted, to preach deliverance to the captives, and recovery of sight to the blind, to set at liberty them that are bruised.” Remember, we talked about the woman who had been sick for thirty-five years or whatever. The Pharisees didn’t want him healing her on the Sabbath in the synagogue. He said, “This daughter of Abraham has been bound for all these years.” He said, “I’ve come to cut those bonds.”

And the healing of the demoniac and Peter’s mother-in-law said that I’ve come to cut, release man from all those bondages that a people then held in spiritual and physical. And that the context, as I said, was the preaching of this passage of scripture from Isaiah that spoke of the year of Jubilee. Jesus had ushered in the final consummation of the sabbatical cycle, the year of Jubilee. He had ushered in the true kingdom of God to which the Jubilee—which all the Sabbaths really pointed to—was that year of release, the year of Jubilee. And Jesus said, “All these things are come upon you. This is the true meaning of the Sabbath.”

And as a result of this then, the old institutions are now seen more definitively as shadows. The reality has come. The old covenant Sabbath was a shadow. The reality has now come. And Jesus will change that date. And how does he do it? He does it by his appearances to the disciples on the first day of his resurrection. And then a full week later, again on Sunday evening, he then appears to them again.

Jesus said, “This is the day in which the cornerstone has been laid.” We read this morning from Psalm 118. And there’s that great verse in there that our kids like to sing the chorus from: “This is the day, the Lord is made. Let us rejoice and be glad in it.” It’s appropriate to sing that every day because every day now is the year of the Lord or the day of the Lord in one sense. But really what it was pointing to was the laying of the foundation stone—over which the Pharisees stumbled on Jesus’s Sabbath healings. He—now that foundation stone had been laid and the proclamation of the laying of that stone occurred with his resurrection.

It was his resurrection that demonstrated the lordship of Jesus Christ. And he told the Pharisees that he was Lord of the Sabbath. And so Jesus put his mark of lordship and of resurrection and of the day of the Lord brought to completion—now, and the year of the Jubilee ushered in—his well, on his resurrection day, which was Sunday. And that was the day that he came with his disciples to have his supper with his people in the context of his new creation.

Jesus had ushered in the year of the Jubilee and because of that it ushered in the new Sabbath as well. We said before that the Sabbath was a sign of the covenant—a perpetual sign of the people of the old Testament—and that it’s a perpetual sign. We have to see some sort of fulfillment of that in the new covenant.

Jesus’s disciples, we’ll look at this more next week, were demonstrative in saying we don’t keep Jewish Sabbath. How could they? How could they keep as the day of great joy and rejoicing and God’s finished work on Saturday, which is the reminder of Jesus laying in the tomb? They didn’t meet on the day in which he was laying in the tomb, that they had been mourning on. They met on the day that Jesus had appeared to them, had broken bread to them, had eaten and drank with them, and had declared his lordship over all things, and the completion of the reality brought to pass of which all the others were shadows.

Jesus ushered in the true Lord’s day.