1/31/2012 1:20:12 PM
"So the Son of Man is Lord even of the Sabbath."
Mark 2:23-28: “23 And it happened that He was passing through the grainfields on the Sabbath, and His disciples began to make their way along while picking the heads of grain. 24 The Pharisees were saying to Him, ‘Look, why are they doing what is not lawful on the Sabbath?’ 25 And He *said to them, ‘Have you never read what David did when he was in need and he and his companions became hungry; 26 how he entered the house of God in the time of Abiathar the high priest, and ate the consecrated bread, which is not lawful for anyone to eat except the priests, and he also gave it to those who were with him?’ 27 Jesus said to them, ‘The Sabbath was made for man, and not man for the Sabbath. 28 ‘So the Son of Man is Lord even of the Sabbath.’”
I have to admit that this section of Scripture has been something that I did not truly understand very well and it was a welcome for me to begin to study this section so that I can understand more clearly what the passage is about. But before we get into the passage I want to do a little bit of review as it has been a while since I have posted anything on the book of Mark. My goal is to make it through one chapter a month and I am cutting this one close as today is the last day of January.
When we look at the very first verse in Mark’s gospel we read these words: “The beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.” Mark is declaring right from the beginning that Jesus Christ is the very Son of God and then he sets out to prove this. We have seen in these first two chapter of Mark that Jesus has power and authority over demons, power and authority over temptation, power and authority over Satan, power and authority over disease, and even Jesus has power and authority in order to forgive sin. Mark is showing by these truths that Jesus Christ is the very Son of God, and we will see in this section that Jesus Christ is even Lord of the Sabbath, something that will cut the religious leaders traditions to the core and will eventually drive them to crucify the Lord of Glory.
I think that it is important to look at the first time that Jesus did something on the Sabbath that was confrontational to the religious leaders of Israel and that is found in the fifth chapter of John where we see Jesus healing a man on the Sabbath who had been sick for thirty-eight years. The story goes as follows, “1 ¶ After these things there was a feast of the Jews, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem. 2 Now there is in Jerusalem by the sheep gate a pool, which is called in Hebrew Bethesda, having five porticoes. 3 In these lay a multitude of those who were sick, blind, lame, and withered, [[waiting for the moving of the waters; 4 for an angel of the Lord went down at certain seasons into the pool and stirred up the water; whoever then first, after the stirring up of the water, stepped in was made well from whatever disease with which he was afflicted.]] 5 A man was there who had been ill for thirty-eight years. 6 When Jesus saw him lying there, and knew that he had already been a long time in that condition, He *said to him, "Do you wish to get well?" 7 The sick man answered Him, "Sir, I have no man to put me into the pool when the water is stirred up, but while I am coming, another steps down before me." 8 Jesus *said to him, "Get up, pick up your pallet and walk." 9 Immediately the man became well, and picked up his pallet and began to walk. Now it was the Sabbath on that day. 10 So the Jews were saying to the man who was cured, "It is the Sabbath, and it is not permissible for you to carry your pallet." 11 But he answered them, "He who made me well was the one who said to me, ’Pick up your pallet and walk.’" 12 They asked him, "Who is the man who said to you, ’Pick up your pallet and walk’?" 13 But the man who was healed did not know who it was, for Jesus had slipped away while there was a crowd in that place. 14 Afterward Jesus *found him in the temple and said to him, "Behold, you have become well; do not sin anymore, so that nothing worse happens to you." 15 The man went away, and told the Jews that it was Jesus who had made him well. 16 For this reason the Jews were persecuting Jesus, because He was doing these things on the Sabbath.” This happened in time before the incident in Mark chapter two, so we can see that the religious leaders were already upset with what Jesus did on the Sabbath.
One thing that is needed to understand is that the Sabbath was something that the religious leaders made as the heart of their false religion, and it was false because they were not following God but tradition and their tradition was wrong. In the Talmud there are 24 chapters that have to do with the Sabbath according to John MacArthur. Here is what Warren Wiersbe writes in his commentary on this section of Mark to help explain exactly what the Bible had to say about Sabbath Law: “God gave the people of Israel the Sabbath after they came out of Egypt (Ex. 20:8-11; Neh. 9:14), and it was a special sign between Israel and Jehovah (Ex. 31:13-17). There is no record in Scripture that God ever gave the Sabbath to any other nation.
“Jewish tradition stated that there were thirty-nine acts that were strictly forbidden on the Sabbath. Moses had prohibited work on the Sabbath, but he did not give many specifics (Ex. 20:10). It was wrong to kindle a fire for cooking (Ex. 35:3), gather fuel (Numbers 15:32ff), carry burdens (Jer. 17:21ff), or transact business (Neh. 10:31; 13:15, 19). But Jewish tradition went into great detail and even informed the people how far they could travel on the Sabbath (200 cubits, based on Josh. 3:4). In short the Sabbath Day had become a crushing burden, a symbol of the galling religious bandage that had captured the nation.”
I must admit that I did not know much about the Jewish Talmud, and still don’t but at least I did do a little research on it and will share a few of the things that I have found out because it is important to understand just what these religious leaders of Jesus’ day truly believed, and when we find out what they believed we will then realize that it was and still is false. “From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia The Talmud (Hebrew: תַּלְמוּד talmūd "instruction, learning", from a root lmd "teach, study") is a central text of mainstream Judaism. It takes the form of a record of rabbinic discussions pertaining to Jewish law, ethics, philosophy, customs and history. The Talmud has two components: the Mishnah (c. 200 CE), the first written compendium of Judaism's Oral Law; and the Gemara (c. 500 CE), a discussion of the Mishnah and related Tannaitic writings that often ventures onto other subjects and expounds broadly on the Tanakh. The terms Talmud and Gemara are often used interchangeably. The Gemara is the basis for all codes of rabbinic law and is much quoted in other rabbinic literature. The whole Talmud is also traditionally referred to as Shas (ש"ס), a Hebrew abbreviation of shisha sedarim, the "six orders" of the Mishnah.”
There are other things that I have found out about the Talmud and I will quote some of the things that John MacArthur says about it from a sermon that he gave on this section of Scripture later on. The main point to remember is that when we look at the Scriptures we find out what God gave in the OT Law and from the time that it was given until the time that Jesus came to earth there was more tradition going on than the actual following of God’s Law. We also know that the Law was impossible for anyone to follow perfectly and when Paul wrote about it he called it a tutor: “24 Therefore the Law has become our tutor to lead us to Christ, so that we may be justified by faith. 25 But now that faith has come, we are no longer under a tutor.” The Law shows us the holiness of God, and therefore it is perfect as Psalm 19 speaks of. Jesus kept the Law perfectly for He asked His accusers “who can convict me of any sin.”
We see in this story from Mark that Jesus was butting heads with the religious leaders and He was not going to budge, for He was right and they were wrong. Is Jesus narrow? Yes He is for He said that I am the way the truth and the life and no one comes to the Father except through Me. There are some who claim that Jesus is just a good person, a good teacher but Jesus claimed to be and proved that He is God in the flesh, for Jesus told Philip that whoever has seen Me has seen the Father.
Verse 23: “And it happened that He was passing through the grainfields on the Sabbath, and His disciples began to make their way along while picking the heads of grain.” Here we see the Son of God walking through the grainfields and eating the ripe grain and He was doing this because He and His disciples were hungry. Let’s see what the Law said about this: “24 "When you enter your neighbor’s vineyard, then you may eat grapes until you are fully satisfied, but you shall not put any in your basket. 25 "When 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 (Deu. 23:24-25).” This law was from God to allow people who were walking along through a grain field to be able to eat, however they were not allowed to harvest the grain just to eat some because they were hungry. According to John MacArthur this is what the Talmud said about what Jesus and His disciples were doing wrong in verse twenty-three. “Now this is what the Talmud said. If you roll wheat in your hands to remove the husks, it is sifting and that is forbidden. If you rub heads of wheat, it is threshing and it is forbidden. If you clean off the shell, it is sifting and that is forbidden. If you throw the chaff into the air, that is winnowing, it is forbidden. So just picking and rolling and rubbing and discarding, they had been reaping, threshing, sifting, grinding, winnowing and preparing food. And their real question, the real underlying question is…why do You and Your disciples live in such overt, open defiance of our religion? Why do You challenge our religion? Why do You challenge our authority.”
In an earlier lesson from Mark we discussed that according to the religious leaders of Jesus’ day He was not religious enough, but if He would come today He would be too religious for most people.
Verse 24: The Pharisees were saying to Him, ‘Look, why are they doing what is not lawful on the Sabbath?’” This was taken up from the comments on verse 23.
Verse 25-26: “And He *said to them, "Have you never read what David did when he was in need and he and his companions became hungry; 26 how he entered the house of God in the time of Abiathar the high priest, and ate the consecrated bread, which is not lawful for anyone to eat except the priests, and he also gave it to those who were with him?’”
Jesus asks this question from verse 25 on different occasions to these religious leaders and it was an embarrassment to them because that is all they would do was read the Scriptures and try to figure out what they were saying. There is a big problem here and that is these people were not believers and therefore they could not understand what the meaning of Scripture is, and still cannot today. I heard something a long time ago that goes along with this “The Pharisees were reading someone else’s mail and therefore could not understand it.
The story that Jesus is talking about here is from 1Samuel 21:1-6, and in that story David was on the run from Saul and had some companions with him and they were hungry and so they stopped at the town of Nod which is where the tabernacle was located and asked the priest if he had anything to eat. The only thing available was the “showbread” or the “bread of the presence.” According to Leviticus 24:5-9 the only ones who were to eat this bread were the priests and that was after it sat for a week on a golden table in the presence of the Lord, and it was changed every Sabbath. This could have been a Sabbath when David received this bread.
Dr. Wiersbe writes: “The argument is reasonable: if a hungry king and his men were permitted to eat the holy bread from the tabernacle then it was right for the Lord of the Sabbath to permit His men to eat the grain from His fields. David broke a definite law given by Moses, for the showbread was for the priests only but the disciples had violated only a man-made tradition. God is surely more concerned with meeting the needs of people than He is with protecting religious tradition. The Pharisees had their priorities confused.” The Pharisees missed out on understanding the Grace of God because they were so blinded by their traditions.
Verse 27-28: “27 Jesus said to them, ‘The Sabbath was made for man, and not man for the Sabbath. 28 ‘So the Son of Man is Lord even of the Sabbath.’” When we look back at the book of Genesis we see that God rested on the sixth day which is the Sabbath and stopped from His work because it was complete. We see in the first chapter of John that Jesus was the One who made all things and so for Him to be Lord even of the Sabbath is Him claiming to be the One who created the earth and all else that was created. Now this really was upsetting to the Pharisees. As far as the title “Son of Man” it is seen in Daniel 7:13: “"I kept looking in the night visions, And behold, with the clouds of heaven One like a Son of Man was coming, And He came up to the Ancient of Days And was presented before Him.” This is the only time we see this title as a Messianic title in the OT, but that is what is was.
I want to say that both John MacArthur and Warren Wiersbe say that there was no mistake when Jesus mentions Abiathar as the high priest, for the record states in 1Sam. 22:20 that Abimelech, was the father of Abiathar as high priest. Dr. Wiersbe writes: “Our lord’s words appear to be a contradiction. They are not. It is possible that father and son each had both names (1Chron. 18:16 and 24:6; 1Sam. 22:20 and 2Sam. 8:17).”
1/31/2012 3:21:46 PM
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