Matthew 12:1-14 – Remember the Sabbath
Today we are continuing to look at the life of Jesus, and we are reading from the passage where Jesus confronts the religious authorities about what to do and what not to do on the day of worship. Let’s read Matthew 12:1-14.
Danny Dutton, age 8, from Chula Vista, California, was asked to write to "Explain God" for his third grade homework assignment. This is part of what he wrote.
“You should always go to Church on Sunday because it makes God happy, and if there’s anybody you want to make happy, it’s God. Don’t skip church to do something you think will be more fun like going to the beach. This is wrong! And, besides, the sun doesn’t come out at the beach until noon anyway.”
I have found that people tend to cling to rules about spending the Sabbath more than to other rules. I remember so many of the rules about what to do and what not to do on Sundays. Well, the insistence of rules dictating Sunday activities is not new. John Calvin, whose teachings are the backbone of Baptist and Presbyterian churches, set up a church state in Switzerland. There, church attendance was mandatory. And like most other times a good idea goes bad, he also set up rules about what height hair can be before it’s immoral, about naming children anything but OT names, and about what colors clothes could be. Calvin the theologian should have known more about grace than he showed.
And the religious leaders in Jesus’ time should have understood the scriptures better than they showed as well. We can see them today criticizing Jesus for picking grain on the Sabbath. Jesus and His disciples were hungry, and so they got something for themselves to eat.
Well, I suppose technically they were working. But there is more to life than technical precision. They were hungry. Would it have been better for them to have passed out in the grainfields because they starved themselves? Is that better?
But this wasn’t so much a breaking of the explicit rules of the OT. Over the years people added to the rules because the OT rules were a little vague at times. The motives were fine, that is, they wanted people to keep in line and do things that would please God. But over time the rules became as important as the original laws. The traditions became as important as the laws themselves.
And even though Jesus was careful not to break OT laws, He didn’t care so much about breaking traditions. I said it before: Jesus was a rebel. He went against the common culture, and even went against what the good religious people believed and taught too. They called Jesus a sinner then, and churchy people call rebels sinners today too, if they go against what it looks like the Bible might be saying, paying no attention to the heart or the motives of the person. If it looks like a duck, then therefore it is, no questions asked.
But Jesus was no sinner. He didn’t mind breaking what others set up as rules. And he quoted an OT story of when the great Jewish hero King David did a similar thing: he ate consecrated bread, which was unlawful for him to do. Jesus caught them with a flaw in their own logic. Would they condemn their hero David by condemning Jesus, or would they let Jesus off because they didn’t want to condemn David as well?
You know, if we applied today’s laws and standards to all Christians over the years, none of them would line up. If we applied our standards of good Christian living to 2000 years of believers, no one would get it right. That’s part of the reason why we shouldn’t judge another person’s spiritual condition: because only God knows the heart.
Jesus went on to say what was most important. He said mercy, pity, kindness, forgiveness, compassion, were more important than beating yourself or others up for what you or they do. Giving others the benefit of the doubt and not being too quick to form an opinion about them is better. Jesus said so.
Because then in v8 He said, “For the Son of Man is Lord of the Sabbath.” What does that mean? It means that serving Jesus fulfills the Law. It means that putting Jesus first makes up for all the stupid things you wind up doing. I read this week about hypocrisy. It said that there are only 2 ways not to be hypocrites. #1 is to be perfect. #2 is to be honest. And since your performance and behavior will never be perfect, you’d better at least be honest with yourself and with others about your weaknesses and sins. Serving Jesus fulfills the Law. Make sure you work harder to follow Him than you do to get everything just right.
Following this incident, Jesus healed a man on the Sabbath. The man’s hand was shriveled, and the leaders were trying to “get” Jesus, to trap Him into doing something they could punish Him for. Listen: beware of those who seem ready to pounce on you for making a mistake. You will never satisfy them; you will never do enough to please them. Just stop trying.
Anyway, they tried to trap Jesus: “Is it lawful to heal on the Sabbath?” Mark’s Gospel tells us that Jesus made the man stand up in front of everybody, and Jesus used him as an example. He said, “If any of you has a sheep and it falls into a pit on the Sabbath, will you not take hold of it and lift it out? How much more valuable is a man than a sheep!” And Luke adds Jesus’ words: “I ask you, which is lawful on the Sabbath: to do good or to do evil, to save life or to destroy it?”
Jesus was asking the question: what’s more important: an animal or a man? What’s more important: to do nothing because of religious rules, or to do something because it’s good? Well, duh. No matter what day of the week it is, it’s better to do good than to do evil, to save life than to destroy it, to save a person than to leave him alone. Jesus said that people are more important than things, and more important than religious obligations.
It’s funny that the leaders were more concerned about doing things right than doing the right thing. They were more concerned with protocol than with the man who was healed. I wonder if the healed man would even have a place in the religious culture because he was healed “wrong”. I wonder if the man would be disregarded because he was tainted by a poor healing.
But that’s what happens when people set up standards that may be based on the Bible but not in the Bible. The important things get lost when minor things get emphasized. Obviously a person is more important than a sheep, but that got lost in the mess that religious obligations had created.
So what is important on the Sabbath? What can a person do, what can’t a person do? Well, let me start by saying, Sunday is not the Sabbath. The Sabbath is Saturday, Sunday is what the NT calls the Lord’s Day. Early believers worshipped on Sunday, the 1st day of the week. And there are no explicit NT rules for how you should do that. In fact, the Apostle Paul said in Colossians 2: “Therefore do not let anyone judge you by what you eat or drink, or with regard to a religious festival, a New Moon celebration or a Sabbath day. These are a shadow of the things that were to come; the reality, however, is found in Christ.”
You see, the point is worship of Jesus – to put Him first in your life. Worship is not found in all the don’ts: don’t play, don’t sing, don’t do bike-riding, don’t go swimming, don’t go driving, don’t go fishing, don’t eat out, don’t clean, and so on. These are all just rules designed to help people, but often they miss the point. I mean, just because someone follows the rules does not make them a Christian, so how important can the rules possibly be?
There are 2 rules given for the Sabbath. One is in Exodus 20:8-11. We are to keep the Sabbath because God rested. God set one day apart for rest, and so should we. Through it we become more like Him. The 2nd is in Deuteronomy 5:15, which says that in Egypt the Israelites never had a vacation. They ceased to be human when they became slaves and work units. Their humanity was lessened when they worked non-stop. This passage leads us to social leisure. Exodus tells us that the Sabbath was for us to pray; Deuteronomy tells us that the Sabbath was for us to play. To pray and to play, to reflect on God and to refresh ourselves.
All those rules about what to do and what not to do on Sunday were based on tradition. And instead of people enjoying the Sabbath, or Sunday rather, it lead to a resistance, a hatred of the day meant to restore us. Like the Pharisees of old, the rules snuffed the life out of a day meant for good. After all, Jesus said in Mark 2: “The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath.”
So, the NT standards for the Sabbath/Sunday are vague, I still think there is wisdom in learning from the OT thoughts. To pray and to play. Well, certainly I think church can be useful for this. Hebrews 10:24-25 says, “And let us consider how we may spur one another on toward love and good deeds. Let us not give up meeting together, as some are in the habit of doing.”
Isaiah 58:13-14 says, "If you keep your feet from breaking the Sabbath and from doing as you please on my holy day, if you call the Sabbath a delight and the Lord’s holy day honorable, and if you honor it by not going your own way and not doing as you please or speaking idle words, then you will find your joy in the Lord.” This says it’s not about doing whatever you want, but ask what would please the Lord. If you look for direction in how you can honor the Lord’s Day, and how you can delight in Him on His day, then He’ll show you, and you will find pleasure in Him.
Here are some things you can do to keep in the spirit of the Sabbath while being Sunday Christians. You could write a psalm of thankfulness to God. You could do some journaling, writing thoughts and prayers down on paper, not so much a diary but a spiritual record keeping. You could write a note of encouragement and appreciation to a friend.
You could keep an hour (or more) of silence. Reflect on how you’ve recently heard God speak to you. You could exercise or take an unhurried, attentive walk outside. You could take a nap. You see, Biblical Sabbath-keeping is an act of trust, a recognition that we can cease our labors for one day a week and the world won’t come crashing down around us. It is a reminder that we are small and limited, but God is infinitely big. Keeping Sabbath is a way to affirm that our lives depend not on our own efforts and strivings but rather on God’s grace and care.
You could turn off your cell phones, your pagers, your Palm Pilots, and your computers. Don’t schedule a meeting; don’t bury yourself in the work you need to catch up on. Just rest. Stop living like a human doing, and start living like a human being.
You could read a nourishing book. You could memorize a brief Scripture passage or reflect on today’s message. Make it a day of spiritual refreshment and physical rest.
I agree with Warren Wiersbe, who said, “The ability to calm your soul and wait before God is one of the most difficult things in the Christian life. Our old nature is restless...the world around us is frantically in a hurry. But a restless heart usually leads to a reckless life.”
Don’t be so caught up with the rules that you miss the heart of the day: being right with God, doing good things. Get some rest and reflect on the importance of a God’s focused life.
