Ten Day 5 A Time For Sabbath: Digging Deeper

1) What is evidenced in the exchange between Jesus and the Pharisees in verses 1-8?
Thanks to the separation of church and state in the western hemisphere, it is clumsy for us to put on glasses to consider a culture where this isn’t the case. Pharisees not only held authority, power, and monetary control for all Jews, they also carried significant weight in the political system. For Israel, Judaism was the national religion, and Pharisees had elevated themselves to the most powerful position within it. To be a Jew meant adherence to societal, political, and religious laws; to a Jew, these were one and the same. When Jesus began His public ministry, He began a radical movement within an otherwise stable and controlled environment. Jesus pushed against the boundaries and limitations the Pharisees had enforced upon the people, many of which didn’t even originate from God. Jesus didn’t come to break the Law, rather, He came to make it abundantly clear to every Jew how hopelessly lost they were because they could never fulfill the Law. The Law was powerless to save them, every single Jew was guilty of breaking the Law, which resulted in their un-holiness. Jesus came to fulfill the Law perfectly for them so they could be saved from their sin and made righteous before a Holy God. The Pharisees, however, missed this point entirely. They focused on the Law as being their ground to protect. They loved their power, and didn’t want anyone to tear it away from them. Jesus threatened that power. With His amassing followers, and the miracles He performed, His popularity with the people grew while the Pharisees fear and anger mounted. As a result, the Pharisees were adamantly opposed to anything and everything Jesus said or did. An epic battle was waging, and the Pharisees were determined they would not lose ground to the radical Jesus who claimed to be God.

2) Why were the Pharisees so vengeful against Jesus? (verses 2, 9, and 14)
These specific interactions between Jesus and the Pharisees center around the Sabbath laws. The original Old Testament laws from God concerning Sabbath were to “Remember the Sabbath and keep it holy” (Exodus 20:8), which meant a cessation from work or laboring. “You must not do any work…. For the Lord made the heavens and the earth, the sea, and everything in them in six days; then he rested on the seventh day. Therefore, the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and declared it holy.” (Exodus 20:10-11) The Pharisees moved right past the heart of the Law, which was intended as a reminder that God had woven a rhythm of rest and labor into the DNA fabric of humanity, and added on additional nuanced laws to God’s Sabbath. Where God had said, “you must not do any work”, the Pharisees said that plucking grain heads to snack on as you walked through a field (verse 2), and healing a handicapped hand (verses 9-10) were against the Law of the Sabbath because they were considered “work”. These human-made laws butted up sharply against God’s original law because it focused only on what man could “do”, or not do, on the Sabbath, rather than God’s desire for man to simply “be” with the Lord God in ceasing from work. Jesus also emphasized Himself as being “greater than the Sabbath” (verse 6) as well as “Lord of the Sabbath” (verse 8). This meant His actions surpassed whatever laws the Pharisees had placed onto God’s laws, because He was in fact the original author of the Sabbath Law. In one move, Jesus claimed to be God while pointing out how the Pharisees had mismanaged God’s instructive law of remembering the Sabbath. God had intended rest and life to flow from the rhythm of Sabbath, but the Pharisees had established decrees that brought suffering and dryness. This direct, and very public, “drawing back of the curtains” on the Pharisees hearts angered them intensely! They rejected being convicted by Jesus and being drawn into repentance, instead they allowed their anger to consume them to the point of plotting against Jesus’ very life. (verse 14)

3) What should we learn about the Sabbath from this scene in Jesus’ life?
God first gave this 4^th commandment centuries before this interaction between Jesus, His disciples, and the Pharisees. Yet, He knew, even then, that this exchange would take place one Sabbath afternoon. What He had first given as a command, He would now live out before His people in their own human flesh. He delighted in the opportunity to show them His heart, and surprisingly to Jesus’ audience, God actually didn’t care about their ability to perform. He wanted their hearts to rest in Him. Jesus wanted His people to love God and others more than worrying about their own aptitude to achieve. Jesus pleaded with them to see how the Sabbath wasn’t about snacking on grain, or the “work” of the hand to reach out and grasp it. Rather, Sabbath was created for our hearts to walk alongside the Savior and feed on Him and His Word. True satisfaction is bound up in living in rhythm with the Lord of Lords. It’s a rhythm that hums with delight in both kingdom work and holy rest. Jesus wanted His disciples to see that love for God and learning His heart (walking with Jesus through the fields) fleshed itself out by loving others (healing the handicapped in the synagogue). The law of the Sabbath is a command to return to deep relationship with the Lord, to rekindle the flames of love for Him, to sit with His Word and hear His voice, and then love others well because we have been so lavishly loved!