JRNT 94 09/28/2025 The Gospel of Luke: Lord of the Sabbath Luke 6:1-11 Jesse Randolph Well, a few weeks ago here at Indian Hills we launched our Men's Equipping Groups, midweek groups for men to get together. I know they've been a blessing to many already. I am in one of those groups on Wednesday mornings and I have to say I have already been personally encouraged by and benefited from the time together with like-minded men as we grow closer together, sharpen each other, get into the Word together. Now each of our Men's Equipping Groups, as you've heard announced, is going through this book by Howard Hendricks titled Living by the Book. The subtitle of the book is The Art and Science of Reading the Bible. In the chapters that we looked at last week in the Men's Equipping Groups, Hendricks takes us through this basic three-level process of Bible interpretation. First you start, he says, with observationÑwhat do I see in the text? And then you get into interpretationÑwhat does this text mean? And then you get into applicationÑwhat does this text have to say to me and how should my life be transformed as a result of what it says in light of its single, fixed meaning. Now note the order there. You don't begin with application, you don't begin with saying what does this text say to me. You don't begin with interpretation; you don't begin with taking shots in the dark about what the human author may or may not have intended to say when he wrote the text as guided by the Holy Spirit. No, you begin with what? Observation. You begin by observing the genre of the passage. Is it a letter, an epistle? Is it narrative like a Gospel? Is it poetry, like the songs? You begin by observing certain words and terms that are being used in the passage. Hey, that word ÒjoyÓ keeps popping up. That must mean something, I'm going to mark that down. That word ÒspiritÓ comes up, that word ÒslaveÓ keeps coming up. That must be significant, I'm making note of that. You begin by observing the context of the passage. Paul was imprisoned when he wrote Philippians and when he said the words, Òcount it all joy.Ó John is on the Isle of Patmos as he receives the vision from the ascended Lord Jesus Christ in the book of Revelation. Luke is writing in his two works, Luke and Acts, to this man named Theophilus. I better learn a thing or two about this guy that Luke was writing to. So, you start with the observation because you want to understand the actual setting and context of whatever text of Scripture you happen to be studying. You start with the observation because while you want to believe that the primary recipient of God's Word is you, the reality is it's not. All 66 books of the Holy Scriptures were written to other people in other places in other contexts in another time. We are indirect recipients of the truths contained in Scripture. We're outsiders looking in. The Scriptures are certainly for us, but they weren't written to us. For instance, we're looking in on history that was given to Israel back in the Old Testament as we read about how God delivered them out of Egypt and then took them into the Promised Land. We're looking in on poetry that was written by men like David and Asaph and the son of Korah as they were going through the heat of various trials and battles and difficulties. We're looking in on prophetic statements that were given to Israel to warn them of judgment that was soon to fall upon them, but at the same time that their Messiah would one day come for them. We're looking in on the life of that Messiah when we read through the four Gospel accountsÑMatthew, Mark, Luke and John. We're looking in on letters that were written by those who, soon after Jesus lived and died and rose, encouraged other followers of Jesus to live faithful lives for Him. We're looking in. And point being Bible study, Bible reading and for today's purposes Bible preaching has to begin with observation. Observation really has to come first and that's what we're going to begin with in our time together in Luke 6 this morning. You can go ahead and turn with me to Luke 6, we're going to be working through the first 11 verses of this chapter, and we are going to see over and over how this text requires us to do a good amount of observation before we can get into interpretation and then what it means to us today, application. Let's look at Luke 6:1-11. God's Word reads, ÒNow it happened that on a Sabbath He was passing through some grain fields, and His disciples were picking and eating the heads of grain, rubbing them in their hands. But some of the Pharisees said, ÔWhy do you do what is not lawful on the Sabbath?Õ And Jesus answered and said to them, ÒHave you never read what David did when he was hungry, he and those who were with him? How he entered the house of God and took and ate the consecrated bread which is not lawful for any to eat except the priests alone? And gave it to his companions?Ó And He was saying to them, The Son of Man is Lord of the Sabbath. Now it happened on another Sabbath that He entered the synagogue and was teaching and there was a man there whose right hand was withered. And the Scribes and Pharisees were watching Him closely to see if He heals on the Sabbath so that they might find reason to accuse Him. But He knew what they were thinking, and He said to the man with the withered hand, get up and come forward. And he stood up and came forward. And Jesus said to them, I ask you, is it lawful to do good or to do harm on the Sabbath, to save a life or to destroy it. And after looking around at them all, He said to him, Stretch out your hand. And he did so, and his hand was restored. But they themselves were filled with rage and were discussing together what they might do to Jesus.Ó Now before we work verse by verse through this text from this first reading of this text, we can already see this drastic pendulum swing that happens within these first 11 verses. In verse 1 you note we have Jesus and His disciples walking through these grain fields, plucking and eating heads of grain, and by the time we get to verse 11 it says these Pharisees who were following Jesus around everywhere at this point are Òfilled with rage.Ó And they are discussing, it says, Òwhat they might do to Jesus.Ó So how do we go from one to the other? How do we go from Jesus's disciples enjoying this grainy little snack to the Pharisees now seeing red and wanting to murder Jesus? How do we go from one to the other? Well, this goes back to observation in establishing the context and specifically developing a clear understanding of the concept of Sabbath in these days in Israel. And what we need to know, Biblically speaking, is that this idea of Sabbath in Israel was rooted in the concepts of rest and remembrance. Rest and remembrance. Turn back with me to Genesis 2. Genesis 1, of course, lays out the creation account where Moses, the human author, describes how God created the heavens and the earth and all that is in them in six literal 24-hour periods, meaning no matter what evolutionary theory says, no matter what Charles Darwin's journals about finches might say, our planet isn't billions and billions of years old. Why not? Because God's Word says it's not. So, Genesis 2, that was your introduction, look at verses 1-3. ÒThus, the heavens and the earth were completed and all their hosts. And on the seventh day God completed His work which He had done, and He rested on the seventh day from all His work which He had done. Then God blessed the seventh day and sanctified it because on it He rested from all His work which God had created in making it.Ó Now that verb in verse 3, Òrested,Ó is the Hebrew verb shabbat which means to rest. On the seventh day God rested, He rested from His creative activity in forming the heavens and the earth and He rested not because He needed rest. He's all powerful, omnipotent. He rested, rather, to set a pattern for His people, His original people, His chosen people, the ones He set His love upon, Deuteronomy 7, the apple of His eye, Zechariah 2, the people of Israel. Go ahead with me now and turn to Exodus 20, where we're going to see the Ten Commandments. These are the precepts which God gave Moses on Mount Sinai to give to His people Israel after they've come out of captivity in Egypt as they were making their way through the wilderness. Of course, in those Ten Commandments you have precepts and laws like you shall have no other gods before Me, thou shalt not murder, thou shalt not commit adultery, thou shalt not steal. But the most expansive command God gave in the Ten Commandments is found in verse 8 of Exodus 20. ÒRemember the Sabbath day to keep it holy. Six days you shall labor and do all your work, but the seventh day is a Sabbath of Yahweh your God. In it you shall not do any work, you or your son or your daughter, your male or your female slave or your cattle or your sojourner who is within your gates. For in six days Yahweh made the heavens and the earth, the sea and all that is in them and rested on the seventh day. Therefore, Yahweh blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy.Ó Now we know from reading through our Old Testaments that the people of Israel were chronically stubborn, chronically stiff-necked. God had to repeat Himself with Israel often, regularly, as He did in the book of Deuteronomy. Turn with me to Deuteronomy 5. Now Deuteronomy is God's second giving of His law. He gave it to them once in Exodus, He had to give it to them again in Deuteronomy. Why? Because they didn't listen. Deuteronomy literally means second lawÑdeutero is the Greek word for second, nomos is the Greek word for law. Second giving of the law. Look at Deuteronomy 5:12, it says, ÒObserve the Sabbath day to keep it holy as Yahweh your God commanded you. Six days you shall labor and do all your work, but the seventh day is a Sabbath of Yahweh your God. In it you shall not do any work, you or your son or your daughter or your male slave or your female slave or your ox or your donkey or any of your cattle or your sojourner who is within your gates so that your male slave and your female slave may rest as well as you. You shall remember that you were a slave in the land of Egypt and Yahweh your God brought you out of there with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm. Therefore, Yahweh your God commanded you to observe the Sabbath day.Ó So, the Sabbath day was a day of rest. Right there in Deuteronomy 5 He says, ÒIn it you shall do no work,Ó and the Sabbath day was a day of remembrance, ÒYou shall remember,Ó God says, Òthat you were slaves in the land of Egypt.Ó Now to fail to keep the Sabbath, to break the Sabbath brought serious consequences in Israel. Go over with me to Exodus 31:13, He says, ÒBut as for you speak to the sons of Israel, saying, You shall surely keep My Sabbaths, for this is a sign between you and Me throughout your generations, that you may know that I am Yahweh who makes you holy. Therefore, you shall keep the Sabbath for it is holy to you. Everyone who profanes it shall surely be put to death, for whoever does any work on it, that person shall be cut off from among his people. Six days work may be done, but on the seventh day there is a Sabbath of complete rest, holy to Yahweh. Whoever does any work on the Sabbath day shall surely be put to death.Ó The Sabbath was a sign, the Sabbath was a day of complete rest, the Sabbath was for Israel, and then it says there the Sabbath involved a capital offense, a serious offense. A Sabbath violation was a capital offense. ÒWhoever does any work on the Sabbath day shall be put to death.Ó This is serious, serious stuff. Now in His kindness God had given His people in His law, in His Word, clear instructions on what they were to do on the Sabbath and what they were not to do. So, it's not like God let this death sentence hang over His people and left them guessing as to what a violation would or would not be. No, He gave very clear instructions and directions. Like in Exodus 16:29, it says, ÒYahweh has given you the Sabbath, therefore He gives you bread for two days on the sixth day. Remain every man in his place, let no man go out of his place on the seventh day.Ó Or Exodus 35:3 says, ÒYou shall not kindle a fire in any of your places on the Sabbath day. Or Leviticus 23:3 says, ÒFor six days work may be done, but on the seventh day there is a Sabbath of complete rest, a holy convocation. You shall not do any work. It is a Sabbath to Yahweh in all your places of habitation.Ó Or in Numbers 15:32 it says, ÒThe sons of Israel were in the wilderness, and they found a man gathering wood on the Sabbath day. And those who found him gathering wood brought him near to Moses and to Aaron and to all the congregation. And they put him in custody because it had not been declared what should be done to him. Then Yahweh said to Moses, the man shall surely be put to death, all the congregation shall stone him with stones outside the camp. So, all the congregation brought him outside the camp and stoned him to death with stones, just as Yahweh had commanded Moses.Ó Then later in Israel's history after the division into the two kingdoms between north and south we hear God saying this to the southern kingdom in Jeremiah 17:21, ÒThus says Yahweh, Take care of yourselves and do not carry any load on the Sabbath day or bring anything in through the gates of Jerusalem. You shall not bring a load out of your houses on the Sabbath day nor do any work. But keep the Sabbath day holy as I commanded your fathers.Ó One more, Nehemiah 13, written even later in Israel's history. This is after Israel has been taken into captivity in Babylon. After they come back from their captivity, Nehemiah said this in Nehemiah 13:15, ÒIn those days I saw in Judah some who were treading wine presses on the Sabbath and bringing in sacks of grain and loading them up on donkeys, as well as wine, grapes, figs and all kinds of loads. And they brought them into Jerusalem on the Sabbath day. So, I testified against them.Ó So, if you are keeping score, what God had decreed was no work on the Sabbath. No leaving home, no kindling a fire, no gathering wood, no carrying loads, no treading out grapes for wine, no bringing items from the marketplace or into the marketplace. None of it. Now fast forward to 2025 in today's ÒI'm just so busyÓ generation. You know what I am talking about. What's the common answer you give when somebody says, how are you doing. I'm busy. Right? We are the ÒI'm so busyÓ generation. In today's ÒI'm so busy generationÓ we might look at all these regulations and rules that I just read off and wonder, what is the purpose of it all. What's the utility of it all. I need that seventh day. I'm made to work, to toil, to labor. Right? Well let's go back to the purpose of the Sabbath given to Israel. It was to rest, to follow the pattern of God resting on that seventh day. It was to remember God's deliverance of His people out of Egypt and His provision for them once He had delivered them. And then that rest and that remembrance was then designed to spur on the typical Israelite to live a more holy, devoted, consecrated life. Leviticus 11, ÒYou shall be holy,Ó God says, Òfor I am holy.Ó Well, by Jesus's day, we're now hundreds of years past Nehemiah, the original purposes of God's Sabbath requirements, God's Sabbath laws had in many ways been obscured. Though the purpose of the Sabbath was to give the people of Israel a day of rest and remembrance and to reflect on the relationship with God even, Isaiah 58:14 says it's to Òtake delight in Yahweh,Ó what had happened is the religious rulers in Israel, namely the Scribes and Pharisees, as they relied upon the rabbinic writings of their day, they had made the Sabbath and Sabbath observance very complicated and very convoluted. The beautiful simplicity of God's original design had been completely washed away. To give you a sense of what I mean, and we don't have time to go through all of these this morning, but by Jesus's day the following practices were deemed to be violations of the Sabbath. Are you ready for these? Carrying children, adding fresh water to a vase of cut flowers, rinsing one's mouth with vinegar (that was the mouthwash of the day), writing down two letters of the alphabet (so aleph, the Hebrew letter ÒaÓ was fine but bet, ÒbÓ was a Sabbath violation), sewing more than one stitch, making two loops, weaving two threads, separating two threads, tying or untying a knot unless you could do it with one hand, then that was okay. In other words, by Jesus's day these man-made rules, these man-made traditions had swallowed up the actual requirements of God. The original purpose of the Sabbath, again, was to rest and to remember. The very heart of the Sabbath was Godward. But by the first century the very heart of the Sabbath for many had been lost. It had been designed to be a blessing for the Israelite but now it had become a burden. The Sabbaths became much more about what you could do and how much you could achieve and just how much you could personally abstain from, you know, set a new record, as opposed to what God had already done for you, to the people of Israel specifically, in delivering you from Egypt and preserving you through the wilderness and delivering you into the Promised Land. These countless Sabbath-related rules and regulations which had developed in the centuries after God had originally given His law not only burdened the average Israelite as they waited for the ÒSabbath policeÓ to jump out of some dark corner and bust them, but these regulations definitely bred legalismÑworks-based righteousness. They gave people the wrong idea that it was okay to have hearts full of evil and anger and greed and lust and selfishness so long as they obeyed those outward requirements of man-made rules. It was okay to strain at gnats while you swallowed camels, to use a phrase our Lord would use later on. That brings us back to our text where we're going to encounter, you can turn back with me to Luke 6, two scenes with all of that background, all of that observation which relate to the Sabbath. Now by this point as He taught, as He healed, as He claimed the ability to forgive sins, as He spent time with sinners, as He claimed, as we saw last week, that He was bringing in a new way and new teaching, new wine into new wineskins, Jesus had not only drawn curiosity out of the Pharisees, He had provoked them, He had elicited their disapproval. But now in the scenes we're going to be looking at today as He touched on this third rail of first century Judaism, i.e., the subject of the Sabbath, we're going to see Jesus move the Pharisees from curiosity and concern and tepid disapproval to outright murderous rage. This is a real pivotal point in Luke's Gospel. Again, we're working through these two scenes, Sabbath-related scenes in Luke 6. In verses 1-5 we're going to see our Lord's Declaration of Authority over the Sabbath, and then in verses 6-11 we're going to see our Lord's Demonstration of Authority on the Sabbath. So, Declaration of Authority over the Sabbath, Demonstration of Authority on the Sabbath. Let's do the first one, Jesus's Declaration of Authority over the Sabbath. Again, picking it up in verse 1 it says, ÒNow it happened that on a Sabbath he was passing through some grainfields, and His disciples were picking and eating the heads of grain, rubbing them in their hands.Ó Luke starts with these words, ÒNow it happened that on a Sabbath.Ó Now he doesn't give us the precise date of this Sabbath, but an educated guess based on grain and growth patterns in this part of the world is that this would be sometime in the late spring, late April/early May. And in terms of where this scene took place, a reasonable assumption would be the slightly sloped plains right outside of Capernaum, where Jesus had been ministering up to this point. The setting for this passage is springtime in Capernaum where Jesus and His disciples are now making their way, it says, through these grainfields. They are doing so, it says, on the Sabbath. ÒNow it happened that on a Sabbath,Ó meaning sometime between sundown on Friday and sundown on that same Saturday. Now look at what Jesus and His disciples were doing on this Sabbath. It says, Òthey were passing through some grainfields,Ó meaning they were walking through the grainfields. And then Luke goes on to say, Òand His disciples were picking and eating the heads of grain, rubbing them in their hands.Ó Now one of the parallels to this account is found in Matthew 12 and then the other parallel is in Mark 3. But in Matthew 12:1 Matthew provides the additional detail that His disciples were doing what they were doing here because Òthey were hungry.Ó Matthew 12:1 says, ÒAt that time Jesus went through the grainfields on the Sabbath, and His disciples became hungry and began to pick the heads of grain and eat. Now a critical fact to highlight here is that what Jesus's disciples were doing was perfectly lawful under the Mosaic Law. Deuteronomy 23:25 reads this way, ÒWhen you enter your neighbor's standing grain, then you may pluck the heads with your hand, but you shall not wield a sickle in your neighbor's standing grain.Ó So, this was openly sanctioned, approved of in God's law. What the law was describing was this process that is known as gleaning those who owned and managed farmland in these days were commanded in God's law, specifically in Leviticus 23, to not reap the corners of the field, to leave those corners of their fields unharvested. And they were to do so, so that those who were poor or those who were traveling through, those who were sojourners and those who were hungry to come and pluck and eat from the four corners of their fields. God's law both commanded the landowner to leave something to be gleaned in those four corners and God's law gave the gleaner permission to satisfy their hunger by gleaning from one of those four corners. So back here in our scene, though, the point is that Jesus's disciples were acting lawfully. They were acting lawfully as they plucked the grain with their hands, they were acting lawfully according to Moses's Law, God's law, as they rubbed that grain between their fingers and they were acting lawfully when they plucked those heads of grain into their mouths to satisfy their hunger. But that wasn't the issue here, that wasn't the point the Pharisees were trying to make. No, for the Pharisees who by this point are perpetually lurking in the shadows the issue here was not so much what the disciples were doing but rather when they were doing it, namely on the Sabbath. Remember this is a time when tying two loops, tying a bow, writing two Hebrew letters side by side was considered to be a violation of the Sabbath according to tradition. This was a time when deadly religious formalism was running rampant. For the Pharisees who continually had their antenna up for any sort of activity that might be perceived a violation of the Sabbath, what Jesus's disciples were doing out there in these grainfields, rubbing grain between their fingers, separating the kernels from the hulls with their fingers, that was just too much. Heaven forbid that somebody would do such work on the Sabbath. They were ready to let Jesus know about it. Look at verse 2, ÒBut some of the Pharisees said, why do you do what is not lawful on the Sabbath?Ó Now where these Pharisees came from, what bush or shrub they jumped out of to confront Jesus, we're not told. But by now His interactions and run-ins with the Pharisees were regularly intensifying, and what we can even see here is that the Pharisees had regular eyes on Jesus by this time. Now take a look at the question they asked Him, which wasn't really a question, it was more so an indictment, more a rebuke. Why do you do what is not lawful on the Sabbath? Now that word ÒlawfulÓ is interesting, because to determine what is or isn't lawful, of course, requires that there be a law. To determine that there be some instance of lawlessness means that there must have been a law that existed and that law has been broken. But here there was no law that was broken, there was no law of God that was broken. So, what was the issue? Well, the issue again was the Pharisees viewed their cherished traditions as being on par with, equal to God's law. According to their traditions Jesus and His disciples were in violation of the law, they were guilty, they were lawbreakers. But not really were they wrong. See, the law, what it actually said, the law provided no prohibition on plucking or eating grain on the Sabbath. In fact, go with me over to Exodus 34, back to the Old Testament so we can see what we're getting here, the point we are trying to land here. Look at Exodus 34:21. This is God speaking through Moses to Israel. Exodus 34:21, He says, ÒYou shall work six days but on the seventh day you shall rest, even during plowing time and harvest you shall rest.Ó This is what the Pharisees were hanging onto in the Luke 6 account that we are studying. According to the tradition the Pharisees held to so tightly, Jesus's disciples, by plucking and rubbing those grain heads between their fingers, they were guilty of harvesting and threshing, working on the Sabbath. According to their traditions at this time something as simple as plucking a head of grain was considered harvesting, and something as simple as rubbing grain between your fingertips was considered threshing. Now I guarantee you that if I went out to one of your farms today after church, either to Milligan or Syracuse or out by Seward, you know who you are, and I were to have just a little snack, go to the corner of one of your fields and pluck something and pop it into my mouth, I guarantee you wouldn't call me a harvester. You would not be saying, Thanks, Jesse, for helping us during the harvest this season. Right? No, you'd be saying, great, you had another snack. Good for you, go back and get ready for evening service. Right? That's the idea here. This was a completely silly notion by the Pharisees that what the disciples of Jesus were doing was harvesting and threshing. It was completely out of touch with reality. But it didn't matter to the Pharisees, they were so blinded by their legalism that they were no longer able to distinguish between their tradition and truth, which is why Jesus would say to them in Mark 7:9, ÒYou are good at setting aside the commandment of God in order to keep your tradition. In Mark 7:13 He accused them of invalidating the Word of God by your tradition. They couldn't tell the difference between the two, between tradition and truth. That's why Jesus in the next section in verses 3-4 back in Luke 6 took them to the truth of God's Word. Look at Luke 6:3, ÒAnd Jesus answered and said to them, Have you never read what David did when he was hungry, he and those who were with him, how he entered the house of God and took and ate the consecrated bread which is not lawful for any to eat except the priest alone? And gave it to his companions?Ó Now note this that between verses 2 and 3 there was an opportunity for Jesus to answer the Pharisees' question about why His disciples were doing what they were doing, but He didn't. They say, why do you do what is not lawful on the Sabbath? He doesn't answer them, He doesn't give a defense, He doesn't say I'm kinda' just not a Sabbath guy anymore, I'm just a chill guy now. He doesn't say anything of the sort. Nor does He lower Himself to the level of this petty group of legalists and engage with them in a debate over what actually constitutes harvesting and what actually constitutes threshing. No, instead He appeals directly to the very thing that the Pharisees lacked, which was truth. He appeals directly to the Word of God. We've already seen Him do this in Luke's Gospel so far, we've seen Jesus regularly appeal to the Word of God in a number of different situations. Right? During His period of temptation by Satan in Luke 4 as Satan presents Jesus with various challenges and offers of power and authorityÑtell this stone to become bread, if You are the Son of God, throw Yourself down from this place, I will give You all this dominion if You worship me. What did Jesus do? Over and over, He appealed to the Word of God. It is written, it is written, it is written. Or later in Luke 4 when He begins His ministry in Nazareth and He is in His hometown synagogue in Luke 4:18-19. He is preaching that sermon to the hometown crowd, what does He appeal to? Isaiah 61, the Word of God. ÒThe Spirit of the Lord is upon Me,Ó He says, Òbecause He anointed Me to preach the gospel to the poor, He has sent Me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to set free those who are oppressed, to proclaim the favorable year of the Lord.Ó We've given you a couple of other examples of that in those discussion questions this week, of ways in which Jesus appealed to the Word of God in the face of opposition. He went to truth over and over. Well, in that same spirit back in our text Jesus had a Scripture He wanted to point the Pharisees to, and He did. Turn back with me over to I Samuel 21, This is what Jesus has in mind as He is engaging with these Pharisees in Luke 6. I Samuel 21:1 says, ÒThen David came to Nob to Ahimelech the priest, and Ahimelech came trembling to meet David and said to him, why are you alone and no one is with you? And David said to Ahimelech the priest, The king has commanded me with a matter and has said to me, ÔLet no one know anything about the matter on which I am sending you and with which I have commanded you.Õ And I have directed the young men to a certain place. So now, what do you have on hand? Give five loaves of bread into my hand or whatever can be found. And the priest answered David and said, there is no ordinary bread on hand but there is consecrated bread if only the young men have kept themselves from women. And David answered the priest and said to him, surely women have been kept from us as previously when I set out and the vessels of the young men were holy though it was an ordinary journey. How much more than today will their vessels be holy. So, the priest gave him consecrated bread., for there was no bread there but the bread of the presence which was removed from before Yahweh in order to put hot bread in its place when it was taken away.Ó Now it's sort of hard to just parachute right into this, I'll give you a little context. The setting here is that David and his men are on the run from King Saul and as they are fugitives, they are going to the Tabernacle in this state of desperation. They are hungry, they want food. And the priest on that day is Ahimelech and he tells him as we just read there, there is no ordinary bread on hand so though David and his men are hungry they are out of luck. But Ahimelech notes there is some of this other bread lying around, the consecrated bread, the showbread. These would be those 12 loaves of bread which were placed on the altar in the Tabernacle from Sabbath to Sabbath. And when they were removed at the end of the Sabbath period, that became the food for the priests who served in that Tabernacle. Well, though he was not a priest, David accepted the consecrated bread from Ahimelech. He took it and all his men ate it, filled their bellies, were on their way. Now you and I could have coffee this week and we could debate and go round and round in circles whether what David did here, what the priest did here was justifiable. Was it justifiable under these circumstances for David to eat the showbread as he was on the run from King Saul? But in the context of Luke's Gospel, that really wasn't the point of the story that Jesus was telling the Pharisees. Instead His point in telling them this story and drawing on that account is to draw this comparison between himself and David; and to draw a comparison between David's action in eating this bread, which was a violation of God's actual law, it was bread that was reserved for priests, and then drawing a comparison to Jesus's disciples plucking and eating grain on the Sabbath which violated no law of God but at most ran afoul of certain man-made traditions. See, there was no question that David in eating of that bread, David and his men, they violated God's law. Yet there is no record of them having been judged negatively for eating that bread. That being so, and here is the genius of Jesus's question, would the Pharisees now standing in front of Jesus be willing to say to Jesus that David and his followers were wrong for eating of the showbread in the Tabernacle? Would they be willing now, after the fact even, to condemn David for doing what he did? Of course they wouldn't, there was no chance they would do that, there was no way. The Pharisees like all Jews during this time revered David. David was permanently enshrined as the greatest of kings, so they wouldn't do that. Checkmate. Jesus had this group of Pharisees right where he wanted them. Not only was One who was greater than Solomon in their presence, but One who was greater than David. And if the Pharisees who are now confronting Jesus and His disciples in those grainfields outside of Capernaum wouldn't have condemned God's original anointed one, David, for committing an actual violation of the Mosaic Law when he ate the consecrated bread, well then that just made clear what their real issue was. Their issue wasn't a zeal for God's Word; their issue wasn't a zeal to uphold the law of God. Their issue, rather, was they wanted to justify their own increasing hostility toward Jesus, who through His teaching was threatening the whole house of cards they had built, a house of cards that was built on works righteousness. There they were, these Pharisees, having just been hermeneutically hip checked by Jesus. As if that weren't enough for them to deal with, look at what Luke reports next in verse 5, back to Luke 6. Luke 6:5 says, ÒAnd He was saying to them, The Son of Man is Lord of the Sabbath. Now with those words Jesus was making a monumental claim. We know from some of the Scriptures that we looked at earlier in the observation portion of the sermon that God was the author of the Sabbath. Deuteronomy 5:14 says, ÒThe seventh day is a Sabbath of Yahweh your God.Ó The Sabbath was a divinely ordered day of rest, the Sabbath came from God, the Sabbath was given by God. God, and only God could enact any rules or regulations pertaining to the Sabbath. Well, what Jesus was claiming here when He said that He is Lord of the Sabbath, well He was making a claim that could be made only by whom? God. We've seen Him do this already. Back in Luke 5, if you look just up the page, this is the account of the healing of the paralytic where we see that He heals the paralytic and that the Pharisees recognize that the only One who has authority to forgive sins is God alone. Well, that's what Jesus is saying here, both in calling Himself Lord of the Sabbath, the One who rules over the Sabbath, the One who created the Sabbath, but also with that other title He gives Himself in Luke 6:5, that He is the Son of Man. He is the Lord of the Sabbath, He is the Son of Man. The Son of Man, of course, comes from Daniel 7, and Jesus uses the same expression in Luke 5:24, ÒBut so that you may know that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins,Ó then He said to the paralytic, ÒI say to you get up and picking up your stretcher go home.Ó Jesus's statement that He has the authority to forgive sins to the paralytic, the Pharisees recognize was a claim of deity. Jesus's words here in Luke 6:5 that He is the Son of Man who is Lord of the Sabbath also would have been very widely known as being a reference to His deity, His Godness. He was identifying Himself not merely as a man but as God. He was sharply steering this conversation away from grain and gleaning to the fact that He is God, the Son of Man, the Lord of the Sabbath. He came not merely as a teacher, not merely as some sort of good example, not merely some sort of moral or religious leader. He came as God Himself, God in the flesh. God is standing right there in their midst. So here are these Pharisees quibbling with Jesus over what can or cannot be done on the Sabbath day. And yet they are looking into the eyes of the One who created the Sabbath, and they are looking into the eyes of the One who created them, and they are looking into the eyes of the One who created everything. And this would have been the prime opportunity for these so-called religious men to fall prostrate before Jesus, to lay down before His feet, to humble themselves to beg for His forgiveness. But that's not what happened. For a preview of where this goes, again look at verse 11, just down the page. Luke 6:11, ÒBut they themselves were filled with rage and were discussing together what they might do to Jesus.Ó We'll get there momentarily, but let's just pivot now to this second part of the story. We've looked, verses 1-5, at Jesus's Declaration of Authority over the Sabbath, now verses 6-11 we're going to see His Demonstration of Authority on the Sabbath. Verse 6, ÒNow it happened that on another Sabbath He entered the synagogue and was teaching. And there was a man there whose right hand was withered.Ó So, Luke says it is another Sabbath. It's not necessarily the next Sabbath; it was likely within a couple of weeks at least of the first incident. And then Luke is clearly grouping these topics together by subject matter. But on this particular Sabbath it says, ÒJesus entered the synagogue.Ó So, we've moved from the grainfields outside of Capernaum into a synagogue likely in Capernaum. Look at who Jesus encountered. ÒAnd there was a man there whose right hand was withered.Ó This man who Jesus encountered there in the synagogue had a deformed hand, a shriveled hand, a withered hand. The word ÒwitheredÓ there literally means dried up. And remember Luke is a physician, he's using medical terminology here, he's highlighting that this man has some sort of muscular malfunction in his hand. It was an atrophied hand, a paralyzed hand. It was a useless hand. How this condition came about we don't know, but this word ÒwitheredÓ implies some sort of longstanding chronic condition, something that would surely have caused this man embarrassment, something that surely would have made it hard for this man to work and even provide for himself. But even then, I love these details that sometimes we just glaze right over, breeze right past. Note where he was, this man with the withered hand. He's in the synagogue. He's been dealt a tough deck but he's there to worship, he's there to hear the Word of God, he's there to pray, he's there to be with fellow Jews at that time. Now this was going to be another interesting encounter for Jesus because again there were these man-made rules and traditions which had developed around the Sabbath at this time where it was considered a violation of the Sabbath to provide medical care for those who had non life-threatening conditions. Let me give you an example. Back in these times it was deemed by way of rabbinical tradition, Pharisaical tradition, to pour cold water on a sprained wrist or a sprained ankle. That was healing, you couldn't do that. It was deemed a violation of the law by way of tradition to put ointment on a cut finger. You could bandage the finger; you just couldn't put Neosporin on it. It was considered a violation of the law to help, you could help a midwife, a midwife could help a delivering mother give birth on the Sabbath, but the midwife could not provide any post-delivery care to that mom or the baby on the Sabbath. She had to wait until the Sabbath had passed, until the sun went down on Saturday to help out. This man with the withered hand did not have a life-threatening condition, he had a withered hand. He wasn't having a heart attack. Jesus had this decision to make as He encountered this man. Would He comply with the Sabbath regulations of His day, and would He refuse to heal this man on the Sabbath and say, just come back to Me Monday, come back to Me Tuesday and then we'll deal with it then. Or would He, heeding His own words back in Luke 5:31 that He came as the physician for those who are sick, heal this man as a demonstration both of His physical power to heal as God and as His ability as God to rescue this man spiritually. Well, as usual He had an audience, Jesus had an audience as He considered His next steps. Look at verse 7, it says, ÒThen the Scribes and the Pharisees were watching Him closely to see if He heals on the Sabbath, so that they might find reason to accuse Him.Ó See, the Pharisees were keenly aware of the conundrum, the pickle that Jesus was in. Would this Man, this supposed Great Physician, the One who had just declared Himself to be Lord of the Sabbath put His medicine where His mouth was and do the unthinkable and heal this man with a withered hand, a mere withered hand, on the Sabbath. They were watching Him, they Òwere watching Him closely,Ó it says. That word means to spy on, to look out of the corner of one's eye. That's the level of intense scrutiny they were giving Jesus. Now again we must put ourselves in the context, we have to do some observation here. Where is this scene taking place? In the synagogue. This is where you are supposed to go worship. But the religious bigwigs of the day, they're not there to worship, they're not there to sing, they're not there to pray, they're not there to act or to hear, they're not there to reflect. They're there to spy, they're there to watch, they're there to watch Jesus's next moves. And they aren't neutral or impartial in doing so. Look at the last part of verse 7. ÒThey were watching Him closely to see if He heals on the Sabbath so that,Ó there's our purpose clause, Òthey might find reason to accuse Him.Ó This really was a sinister bunch. They didn't care about the well-being of the man with the withered hand. All they cared about was catching Jesus, all they cared about was seeing their own traditions upheld so that they could eventually corral Jesus and arrest Jesus and be involved in the murder of Jesus and He knew it. He knew they were there, He knew what they were there for, He knew they were waiting for Him to heal this man on the Sabbath so that they could accuse Him of breaking the law. He knew He was being watched. Not only did He know He was being watched, He knew the thoughts of the ones who were watching Him. Verse 8, it says, ÒBut He knew what they were thinking.Ó Of course He did. He's God, He's omniscient. We've seen all over Luke's Gospel, we will see in the future, too, these instances where Jesus knew the thoughts of men. Luke 5:22, ÒJesus, knowing their reasonings, answered and said to them, why are you reasoning in your hearts?Ó He knew what was going on inside. Or Luke 9:47, this will be that scene where this argument is brewing between the disciples about which one is the greatest and we're told that ÒJesus knew what they were thinking in their heart.Ó And then here in our passage Luke tells us that ÒHe knew what they were thinking.Ó The Son of Man, the Lord of the Sabbath can see into the hearts and minds of men. The way this is worded it could even be translated, verse 8, that He knew their thoughts all along, meaning He knew that they thought that they had finally Ògot Him.Ó He knew that they thought that they had set up this whole plan perfectly. He knew that they thought that they were going to catch Him and accuse Him of breaking the rules and then He would be done. But what they would soon find out is that He had set them up, as He was about to reveal yet again who He is. Look at verse 8, the rest of it. It says, ÒHe said to the man with the withered hand, Get up and come forward. And he stood up and came forward.Ó So, this wasn't going to be some sort of private healing service for this man, this was going to be a public demonstration, a public display. To this point in the synagogue's service this man would have been sitting quietly with the others there, listening to Jesus teach. But when the Pharisees made this issue of healing on the Sabbath, He orders this man to get up from where he was seated, and then right in the middle of this assembly He wanted the Pharisees to see what He was going to do next to this man. He knew what He was being watched for, but He wasn't afraid. He knew what the Pharisees were trying to do, but He wanted to be seen by them. So, He says to the man, Get up, come forward. And it says, ÒHe stood up and came forward.Ó The man obeyed, he did what Jesus ordered him to do. And then with the man standing in front of everyone in this moment of peak tension, Jesus directs His attention back to the Pharisees, these hyper-zealous legalists who were making it a sport to follow Him and watch Him, and He asks them a question. Verse 9, ÒAnd Jesus said to them, I ask you, is it lawful to do good or to do harm on the Sabbath, to save a life or to destroy it.Ó Now hang with me. This question that Jesus asks is absolutely brilliant. It's completely genius. Put between those two choices that He lays out in verse 9 here, the correct answer to Jesus's question, of course, is that it is lawful to do good set against doing harm on the Sabbath. Of course, you do good and not harm on the Sabbath. Okay, so if it's lawful to do good on the Sabbath, then Jesus, by healing this manÕs withered hand on the Sabbath, would be lawful because to heal somebody in that sort of situation would be objectively good, beneficial. In fact, in Matthew's version of this account in Matthew 12:11-12, Jesus ends with the sentence, ÒSo then, it is lawful to do good on the Sabbath.Ó In Jesus's own words it is lawful to do good on the Sabbath, it's lawful to save a life rather than to destroy it on the Sabbath. Now what about the other side of this hypothetical that Jesus proposes here in verse 9? Would it ever be lawful to do harm on the Sabbath, or to use His word there, to destroy a life? Surely the Pharisees wouldn't be okay with doing harm on the Sabbath or destroying a life on the Sabbath. Right? And for no other reason than that doing something harmful to someone else on the Sabbath would amount to work. Right? To plunge a knife into someone's back even on the Sabbath is going to require you to break a bit of a sweat. And the Pharisees were against working on the Sabbath. Now here is where we really see the brilliance of Jesus's question, which really wasn't a question but a statement, and a powerful one at that. He was saying to the Pharisees here by asking this question that by plotting against Him as they were and working themselves up into a frenzy as they were, seeking to trap Him and ensnare Him as they were on the Sabbath, guess what the Pharisees were doingÑworking. They were working on the Sabbath. They themselves were in violation of the Sabbath. You want to talk about an all-time plot twist, there it is. These ardent Sabbath protectors were themselves being singled out by Jesus here as Sabbath violators. They are there trying to trap Him, but the Lord of the Sabbath traps them. And so now hovering over this room and this scene is this question Luke is just teeing up for us in this accountÑwho here is actually breaking the Sabbath? I really think you could have heard a pin drop in this synagogue on this day. But He's not done, Jesus is not done. Verse 10 says, ÒAnd after looking around at them all,Ó I think those words record the longest silent stare in world history. He's looking around at them all. Mark 3:5 adds that ÒHe was looking at them with anger, grieved at the hardness of their hearts.Ó But His eyes are locked in on them, He's looking around at them all. I bet their eyes are looking down. He's looking at the tops of their heads because they can't make eye contact with Him. And then to the man He says, ÒStretch out your hand.Ó There is the command. Now the man has a decision to make, is he going to respond to Jesus in faith and stretch out his hand, or maybe out of fear is he going to worry about what the Pharisees might think and refuse to do so. Well, he makes his decision. Verse 10, ÒAnd he did so,Ó meaning he extended his hand, Òand his hand was restored.Ó Right there on the spot, in front of everyone, for everyone to see, this man's hand was miraculously restored. The blood in that right hand started flowing properly, circulating properly. The muscles, tendons, nerves, joints began to function, work properly. In this shining display of power, divine power, his once-deformed right hand was now as good as new. That made for yet another awkward moment for these Pharisees. They've just been schooled in the Scriptures by Jesus, they've just been told by Jesus that He is Lord of the Sabbath and the Son of Man, meaning God. They have just heard Him ask this question in verse 9 where He is actually accusing them of violating the Sabbath, they've just witnessed Him heal on the Sabbath. So, what are they going to do? Are they going to be like the man with the withered hand and act in faith? See Jesus for who He is, truly, and humble themselves and prostrate themselves and worship Him? We get our answer in verse 11. ÒBut they themselves were filled with rage and were discussing together what they might do to Jesus.Ó There's no fairytale ending to this story, sadly. This man with the withered hand had just been healed of his condition and no doubt he was rejoicing. His shame was now gone, he had just gotten his life back, you could say. But none of it mattered to the Pharisees, they were still filled with rage. They had seen too much from Jesus by this pointÑfraternizing with lepers and tax collectors and sinners, claiming this ability to forgive sins, overriding rabbinic customs and traditions, violating the Sabbath, claiming to be Lord of the Sabbath. It was all too much. They were furious, angry, Òblindingly madÓ is the idea of that word there for Òbeing filled with rage.Ó As the parallel account in Mark 3:6 says, ÒThey immediately began taking counsel as to how they might destroy Him.Ó Why? Well, for one, their hearts were darkened, we know that. But also, very practically they knew that their livelihood as legalistic rule-enforcers was in jeopardy with Him on the scene. So now at their wits' end they were on this concerted mission to stop Jesus, a mission we know, as we keep working through this, will end at the cross. Next week, Lord willing, we will continue in chapter 6 with Luke's account of the appointing of the twelve. Before we dismiss, though, I want to close with a very brief quote from J. C. Ryle in his commentary on this passage. Speaking of the Pharisees here he says, ÒWhat excessive importance hypocrites attach to trifles.Ó I think that really summarizes and puts a bow on what we've learned this morning. ÒWhat excessive importance hypocrites attach to trifles.Ó Last Sunday I made the observation that we all have a little bit of Pharisee in us. We all have to be mindful of that truth, we all have to be protected against that truth, we always have to be on guard against that drift toward legalism or works-righteousness that the Pharisees embodied. I pray that that quote, I pray more importantly that our time in this text this morning helps us center our affections on what truly matters most. That we remember Jesus Christ. Let's pray. Father, we thank You for this time together in Your Word this morning. We thank You for the depths of Your Word, all the riches it contains. We thank You that we can look into this narrative from 2000 years ago across the world, involving a different culture and different language and yet we can understand it, we can seek the original meaning and intention behind it, and we can take a principle, a truth, and we can apply it to our lives. Help us to do that this morning, God. Help us to take the timeless truth that is contained in the text we've been looking at today about legalism and works-based righteousness and Pharisaism. Help us to see that in our own hearts, in our own lives. Help us not to be those who obsess over trifles, obsess over man-made rules and regulations and traditions, but help us center our affections on You and what You've revealed in Your Word and how You've revealed Yourself through Your Son. Help us to live honorable, godly lives in Christ Jesus this week. We pray in JesusÕ name, Amen.