Jesus Is Confronted About the Sabbath, Chooses the Twelve

If we can get it hooked up back there in the back. We'll be beginning on page 23 of the Harmony, if you want to follow along with me here. Although I will be showing the scriptures up on screen. As soon as I get this set up here. Okay. And today we'll be covering a lot of materials. I'm going to rush through this pretty quickly. We probably will not have time for questions and answers going through this. I may or may not include or omit some material. As I was finishing this up about 1 a.m. this morning, I realized I've probably got enough material here for two sermons. So it may run a bit long. I do want to warn you about that. But it's very important. I want to get through so that we're finishing with the beginning of the Sermon on the Mount, which will be a very extensive and interesting study. So I'm trying to cover all of our remaining material until we get up to that. So normally I probably would split this up into more than one message. But because of that constraint, I want to stop at a logical place and begin at a logical place next time. So that's what we'll be doing today. Last section we covered was John 5. We talked about how Jesus healed a blind man at the pool of Bethesda in Jerusalem on one of the Sabbaths. And this, of course, led to a confrontation between Jesus and the Jerusalem religious establishment because they forbade healing on the Sabbath. Now that sounds bizarre to us, but we'll go into that concept and how they interpreted that a bit later on. And then that transitioned into a number of statements from Jesus about himself and his relationship with God the Father. And now in the story flow of the Gospels, we're back for another round between Jesus and the Pharisees as to what was and was not allowable on the Sabbath day. So we'll get right into the story flow with an incident that some people interpret as believing that Jesus abolished the Sabbath or said the Sabbath isn't necessary, isn't required, or that we no longer need to keep the Sabbath day holy. But is this the point of what is written down for us? Well, we'll examine that as we go through along. So today we'll start on page 23 with the section titled, Controversy over Jesus' Disciples, Plucking Grain on the Sabbath. And I sent out a number of study questions earlier in the week and then last night. And hopefully you had an opportunity to read through those and think about those because it'll help us as we go through today. So we'll begin reading today from Luke's account because it includes an interesting detail here that Matthew and Mark do not include in their Gospels. So starting here in Luke 6 and verse 1, it says, Now it happened on the second Sabbath after the first that he, Jesus, went through the green fields and his disciples plucked the heads of grain and ate them, rubbing them in their hands.

So what I want to draw our attention to to start with, and this was one of the study questions, is what does it mean when Luke uses this term on the second Sabbath after the first?

What is it talking about? Normally, I'd ask you at this point, how many of you research that and think you know what that means, but for lack of time we'll just go ahead through this.

This very second Sabbath after the first is in Greek, Deuterocrotos Sabaton. Sabaton is Sabbath in Greek. Deuterocrotos, if you know anything about Greek, breaks down into Deutero, which means second, as in the book of Deuteronomy, which is the second giving of the law.

Then, Protos means first, as in our English word, prototype. It's the first of several. This word, Deuteroprotos, does mean the second after the first Sabbath there. What does that mean? Where do we find in the Bible that Sabbath days are counted?

Or in an order like that, where you would count a first Sabbath, a second Sabbath, and so on.

Hopefully, you've researched this out, but the answer is found in Leviticus 23.

This is where we do find Sabbath being counted. Are people specifically told to count Sabbath here?

Leviticus 23, and of course this is the chapter where all of the holy days of the Bible are listed.

God instructs here, "...and you shall count for yourselves from the day after the Sabbath," this is talking about the day during the Sabbath, the weekly Sabbath, during the days of Unleavened Bread. "...you shall count for yourselves from the day after the Sabbath, from the day that you brought the sheaf of the wave offering, seven Sabbaths shall be complete." So you have to count seven Sabbaths. Verse 16, count 50 days to the day after the seventh Sabbath, then you shall offer a new grain offering to the Lord, to the Eternal. And then skipping down to verse 21, "...and you shall proclaim on the same day that it is a holy convocation," or a sacred assembly, to you. "...you shall do no customary work on it, it shall be a statute forever in your dwellings throughout your generation." So we probably recognize this as the instructions for how to count to determine the day on which to keep the Feast of Pentecost. You count seven Sabbaths, one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, and then the day after that is the Feast of Pentecost.

So when Luke is referring here to the second Sabbath after the first, what he's telling us is that this is the second Sabbath after the first in these seven Sabbaths that we count to reach the Feast of Pentecost. So what this is telling us is that here in Luke's account, these events that we're reading about, took place about one to two weeks, depending on when the weekly Sabbath fell during the days of Unleavened Bread. So it's about one to two weeks after the Passover and the Feast of Unleavened Bread, again depending on when the weekly Sabbath fell during that seven-day Feast. So which harvest started with the Wave Sheep offering during the days of Unleavened Bread? Well, that was the barley harvest.

The Feast of Pentecost is structured around the timing of the wheat harvest. So they've started harvesting the barley there during the days of Unleavened Bread after the Wave Sheep offering. So we can tell conclusively that this takes place in a barley field because the barley was now ripe. It would be several more weeks around Pentecost before the wheat harvest is ripe. So this places these events then shortly after the Feast of Unleavened Bread and the Passover.

And this gives us a time marker because we can tell from this. This is the second Passover of Christ's ministry, about a year and a half into his ministry. It started as ministry around the time of the Feast of Tabernacles. So this is during the spring, about a year and a half later. We've already covered his first Passover earlier in the book of John. So this is notable for two reasons that we'll talk about later on in the sermon. One is that here we are a year and a half into his ministry and he hasn't chosen the twelve apostles yet. We tend to assume that he chose the twelve apostles very early on and they were with him the entire three and a half years. Well, they were with him but they weren't apostles yet. We're actually going to cover that later on today.

It's also notable that, as we'll see shortly here, that he already, only a year and a half into his ministry, has people who want to kill him. We'll talk about that in some detail later on. So it will be another two years before they do kill him. But the hatred, the resentment, the jealousy, the factors that lead up to that are already at work and they hate him that much already.

Another thing that's significant about Luke talking about this being the second Sabbath after the first is—and we talked about this a couple of years ago when we went through the introduction to the four Gospels—Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. But Luke's Gospel is apparently written in the mid to late 60s AD. So this is 30 to 35 years after Jesus Christ's crucifixion and resurrection.

Here he is talking about the method for calculating Pentecost. He just refers to it as a granted that his audience will understand that that's what he's talking about because he doesn't take the time to explain it there. So what is the significance of this? Well, it doesn't make any sense if you take the position that Jesus un-knowed the Sabbath and the holy days.

Because why would he be talking about the method for calculating Pentecost more than 30 years, more than three decades, after Christ's death and resurrection if Christ's death and resurrection notified those things? It just makes no sense that Luke would do that.

Also, some other factors is who is Luke? Well, Luke is himself a Gentile.

His writing—we talked about this in the introduction to Luke's Gospel several years ago—he's writing primarily to Gentiles as well. So if you've got a Gentile writing to a Gentile audience decades after Christ's death, and he just mentions in passing the method for calculating Pentecost. So again, it makes no sense if you take the position that by Jesus' death that annulled the keeping of the Sabbath and the holy days. One other study question I sent out was why does the King James Version say corn here? Well, if you remember your early American history classes, or maybe Western civilization classes, when the Spanish explorers came to the New World, they found a new crop being grown by the Indians that they hadn't ever seen before. That crop was maize. And it was from maize that we get our modern corn. So the point in my mentioning this is corn was unknown in Europe and the Middle East until the Spanish explorers came to the New World north and central and south America, found the Indians growing this crop, and then they took it back to Europe. And since then, it's been refined to produce our modern type of corn here. So corn is actually, the reason it's translated that way in the King James, is corn, four centuries ago when the King James was translated, simply meant grain. Any kind of grain was called corn, not corn as we know it today, just referred to any kind of grain. In the same way, in the King James Version, you'll see it using meat to refer to anything that you eat. It has Christ saying, my meat is to do with my father's will. It doesn't mean meat, beef, chicken, or whatever.

It simply means food. So this is one reason why I use the new King James, primarily, in other versions, is because the King James Version, while it is a good translation, and it's the only one that people have for many years, but the problem now is that the English language has evolved so much, and the meaning of some of our English words has changed so much, that you, as I put it, you need a translation to understand the translation. In other words, you need to translate a lot of King James words into modern English, what they mean now.

That's why I rarely use the King James Version and use more modern translations instead, which don't have that problem. Continuing on now with the story, now we'll switch over and start reading from Matthew's account, because he includes a few more details in here that Luke doesn't. So, Matthew 12, beginning in verse 1, At that time Jesus went through the grain fields on the Sabbath, and his disciples were hungry and began to pluck heads of grain and to eat.

So let's take a look and dissect what's going on here. First, let's understand that these fields weren't the giant grain fields that we see today. If you drive up by 25 in summer and early fall, you'll see these huge acres of grain and corn and so on that are hundreds or thousands of acres.

Well, the fields in that time were much smaller, probably more about the size of this room, if even that. That would be a typical size grain field for a family there. So it's not these huge fields. And also the way this is worded makes it sound like they're just walking through the middle of the field, stomping down everybody's grain stalks. Well, no, you wouldn't do that. Because the fields would have been separated by paths, defining the property there, the property owner's property. They would be called roads, but we would call them paths. It would be three, four, five feet wide. And that would be just enough for a person and maybe a cart or a donkey or something like that to walk through. So they're not walking through the middle of the fields. When it uses fields, it's talking about fields collectively, large areas that are broken up into a lot of smaller fields there. So what they're doing is walking on these paths. And as they walk through, they're reaching out and grabbing handfuls of grain as they go by. The handfuls of barley there.

So that is what's going on. And they were picking this barley as they would walk along and rubbing it in their hands, as Luke describes, and then popping it in their mouths.

Have any of you ever had raw wheat or raw barley like that? Just the kernels?

It's a little bit dry, but it's very tasty and very, very filling, especially after it gets in your stomach and mixes a little water there. A little bit of that will go a long way in filling you up there. So that's what they're doing. I might mention, too, that incidentally, that since this is the Sabbath, that my guess, just looking at this logically, they're probably in their...

It's probably around lunchtime, because had it been earlier in the day, they would have already had their morning meal, and they wouldn't have a need to eat anything on their way to the synagogue.

They've probably gone to morning synagogue services, and it's lunchtime now, so they're going out grabbing a snack, and then we'll come back to the synagogue in the afternoon. And it's probably also not after afternoon services at the synagogue, because then they would be going to a home to have a full meal, and you wouldn't want to snack and ruin your appetite for it. So this is probably during lunchtime, and they're just having a quick lunch by walking through the fields like that and grabbing a little bit of grain. So it makes perfect sense that that is what is going on here. Now, let me ask you another question here. And let's see, here's, yeah, I should have shown these photos. This is what barley looks like. It looks a lot like wheat, but it's not as high quality food as wheat. Wheat is a better crop, more suitable for human consumption. And as they would rub it in their hands like that, what that would do is separate all the chaff, the unnecessary stuff from the kernels, and you would end up with a handful of little kernels like that, and then you pop them in your mouth. So this is what barley kernels look like. Very notable here in Colorado for growing beer. So another question that I ask is, are they stealing the grain because they're walking through the fields taking this grain? Well, no, they're not because there was a biblical law that specifically allowed for this. And you can bet that were they stealing it, what were the Pharisees have done? Well, they would have accused them of stealing. But the Pharisees know they're not stealing, that this is perfectly permissible according to God's law. So we find this law in Deuteronomy 23 and verse 25. When you come into your neighbor's standing grain, so a grain field, you may pluck the heads with your hand, but you shall not use a sickle on your neighbor's standing grain. And God gave other similar laws. The verse before this is essentially the same thing about vineyards. You can walk through your neighbor's vineyard and pluck off a few grapes and pop them in your mouth to eat them. But you're not allowed to take a container with you and take all the grapes you want and take them home. No, that was not allowed there. Nor could you take a sickle into your neighbor's grain and take a lot of it. No, you could just take enough to satisfy your immediate hunger, and that is it. So that's what is going on here. And it's perfectly allowable under the laws. These were some of the anti-poverty laws, you might say, that God instituted in the Bible. He didn't have a welfare system like we do today, but did have provisions. You may remember the book of Ruth. Another example, this takes place at the time of Pentecost and the wheat harvest.

Another of the laws was after the fields were harvested, you could not, if you were the landowner, go back over and pick up all of the grains that had fallen off during the harvesting process.

Also, the landowners were told to leave the corners of the field to leave some of the standing grain in the corners so that the poor people of the land could come through and harvest that for themselves. That was kind of the welfare system, if you will. But the people still had to work for it.

It didn't require the landowners to harvest the grain and give it to somebody else.

People had to work for it. There are those kinds of provisions built into God's laws.

Continuing back to Matthew 12, now in verse 2.

When the Pharisees saw it, saw them plucking the grain, they said to Jesus, Look, your disciples are doing what is not lawful to do on the Sabbath.

Let's dissect that a little bit. What we have is the Pharisees and the rabbis had come up with 39 categories of what they considered work that was forbidden on the Sabbath. A little bit of background of that. They knew that about six centuries earlier, the kingdom of Judah had been taken into captivity. In Ezekiel 20, it spells out the specific reasons. There were two of them given there. One was idolatry, they were worshiping false gods, and the other was Sabbath-breaking.

God tells them these are the reasons that you were destroyed as a nation and taken into captivity. So recognizing that, the religious rabbis and Pharisees built a fence around the Sabbath day so that people could not possibly break the Sabbath, violate it, and lay to them being taken into captivity again. I want to make clear that we tend to give the Pharisees a bad rap, some of it is deserved, but some of it isn't deserved, because their intentions were good.

They wanted to please God, they wanted to obey God, they wanted to keep His laws, they wanted to serve Him. The problem was that their approach to it was very legalistic and didn't really reflect the mind of God and His purpose and intent with those laws. God intended the Sabbath to be a blessing, but because of all their restrictions, they had turned it into an unbearable burden.

To understand their thinking, you might think of it as wintertime, while I was wearing sweaters. You may have a loose thread in that sweater and you think, well, that looks awkward sticking out. I'll just pull it out. If you've ever done that, sometimes the results of that are not good, because you start pulling and pulling, and soon your whole sweater unravels.

They took the approach that you never pull on that first thread because you don't know where it's going to lead. Therefore, we're going to set up all these rules and regulations to prevent you from ever pulling on that one thread and messing up the whole thing or going down a path that will lead you to breaking the Sabbath. As a result of this thinking, they came up with their list of what was and was not allowed on the Sabbath day. Again, they came up with 39 categories of what they called work that was considered forbidden on the Sabbath. Some of these I've mentioned before, you could not carry anything that weighed more than two dried figs, which is no more than a few ounces there. If your house was on fire, you couldn't gather up your clothing and turn out of the house with it. However, you could stand in your house, put on all the clothing that you could wear, and then walk out of your house looking like the Pillsbury Doughboy or the Michelin Man or something like that. Because to carry the clothes out was carrying a burden that weighed more than two figs. But you could wear all you want and leave your house that way if your house was on fire. This is how picky some of it got. You couldn't spit on the ground on the Sabbath day because that would disturb the soil. And that was kind of like plowing.

So this is how nutty it got. So they had their 39 categories of work, but then each of these had its own set of rules and regulations as to how it applied and what circumstances and so on. So so this is where these conflicts come in between Jesus and the Pharisees and the scribes that we read about so often in the in the Gospels. Now in this particular situation that we're talking about here, according to the Pharisees rules, Jesus and the disciples were breaking several of their commandments about what kind of work was not allowed on the Sabbath day. First of all, they are harvesting or reaping because they're going walking on this path and reaching out and plucking grain. Well, that's reaping. So you can't do that on the Sabbath. That's forbidden. You do it on any other day, but not on the Sabbath day. Second, according to their rules, as they rubbed the barley heads and their hands, they were threshing. That was the threshing process to crack open the barley kernel so you could get barley heads to get to the kernel. So now they're threshing. They're engaging in a second category of work that's forbidden on the Sabbath.

And third, they are also in that process winnowing the barley. The winnowing is separating the wheat from the chaff, the edible from the unedible part. So here they're performing three categories of work by reaping, by threshing, by winnowing. They're breaking their rules in three different ways.

You might add a fourth one, and that is they're preparing a meal on the Sabbath. Because according to their rules, you had to prepare all your food on the day before the Sabbath, on the preparation day, and you were not allowed to cook or prepare meals on the Sabbath. They all had to be ready to go and ready to eat. So in their minds, then, the minds of the Pharisees, by going through these different processes, they have violated at least three, maybe four, of their forbidden categories of work. So the question is, were Jesus and the disciples breaking the Sabbath? No! Not as God intended. They certainly weren't. He and his disciples had simply ignored these man-made regulations that were, in reality, not making the Sabbath a delight, but making it a burden for people. So now let's look at Jesus' response to this accusation that they are breaking the Sabbath. Matthew 12, and now down in verse 3. But Jesus, well, let's read verse 2 again. The Pharisees saw it, and they said to him, Look, your disciples are doing what is not awful to do on the Sabbath, according to their view of the Sabbath. But Jesus said to them, Have you not read what David did when he was hungry, he and those who were with him? How he entered the house of God, and ate the showbread which was not lawful for him to eat, nor for those who were with him, but only for the priests? Jesus is here referring back to an incident found in 1 Samuel 21, verses 1-6. Let's read about what happens here. To give you a little bit of background of this, David is on the run. He and his men are being pursued by Saul, by the government forces, and they are in a very precarious situation. They are viewed as outlaws. They are fleeing for their lives. So they don't have the opportunity to stop and farm and grow crops. They don't have the opportunity to go out and try to hunt game to live on, because they are the ones being hunted there. They are in pretty desperate straits. You might argue that they are starving. They are desperate for food here in this situation.

Desperate times call for desperate measures. David goes to the tabernacle to knob where it is, verse 1, to a hemelech the priest. And a hemelech was afraid when he met David and said to David, Why are you alone, and no one is with you?

So David said to a hemelech the priest, The king, which is Saul, has ordered me on some business and said to me, Do not let anyone know anything about the business on which I send you, or what I have commanded you. And I have directed my young men to such and such a place. He is essentially on a secret mission. Actually, this is a flat-out lie.

It is. David is lying, but again, he is desperate. I am here alone, because I have directed my men to some other place. And David says, Now therefore, what have you on hand? Give me five loaves of bread in my hand, or whatever you can find. And the priest answered David and said, There is no common bread on hand, but there is holy bread, if the young men have at least kept themselves from women. Then David answered the priest and said to him, Truly women have been kept from us about three days since I came out.

And the vessels of the young men are holy, and the bread is in effect common, even though it was sanctified in the vessel this day. So the priest gave him the holy bread, for there was no bread there but the showbread, which had been taken from before the Lord, in order to put hot bread in its place on the day when it was taken away. Let's now go back to the command in Leviticus 24, verses 5-9 about the showbread, this bread that is being talked about here.

I'll read this from the New Living Translation, which makes it a little more clear. Here's God's command about the showbread. You must bake twelve loaves of bread from choice flour, using three quarts of flour for each loaf. Place the bread in the Lord's presence, on the pure gold table, and arrange the loaves in two rows with six in each row. Sprinkle some pure frankincense near each row. It will serve as a token offering, to be burned in place of the bread, as an offering given to the Eternal by fire.

Every Sabbath day this bread must be laid out before the Lord, on behalf of the Israelites, as a continual part of the covenant. The loaves of bread belong to Aaron and his male descendants, who must eat them in a sacred place, for they represent a most holy portion of the offerings given to the Eternal by fire. Question was it lawful for David and his men to eat the showbread? I won't ask for a show of hands here. But it wasn't. It absolutely wasn't here, because notice what the instruction says. Highlighted here. The loaves of bread belong to Aaron, the high priest, and his male descendants, the priesthood, who must eat them in a sacred place, at the tabernacle.

In other words, there. That was the instruction. The bread belongs to Aaron, his descendants, the priests, and it must be eaten here at the tabernacle. End of story. So it was unlawful for David and his men to eat the priests.

Let's notice also, back here in Matthew 12, where we just read this, and notice what Jesus Christ Himself said. Verse 3, Have you not read what David did when he was hungry, he and those who were with him? How he entered the house, or the tabernacle of God, and ate the showbread which was not lawful for him to eat? Jesus Christ confirms it was not lawful for Him to eat the showbread, because it was only for the priests, as Jesus said here. We see this clearly confirmed, both in the original instructions and in what Jesus Himself said. David clearly took the showbread that was not lawful for him to have and to eat.

So what is Jesus' point in using this as an example or an illustration with the Pharisees? Why does He use this example of David? Well, I've read a lot of explanations, I've heard a lot of explanations, which I don't have time to cover today. So what I will do is give you the one that to me makes the most sense and is consistent with exactly what we read here and everything else that follows because this is one vignette out of a bit of a story here. So I think what Jesus is doing is simply pointing out to the Pharisees that they are essentially using unjust weights and measures, to use a biblical term.

One of the God's laws was that you can't use unequal weights and measures, but this is what the Pharisees are doing here. By that I mean, and Jesus means, that their standards were different. They were inconsistent. The Pharisees made excuses for some things for some people, but condemned other people for the same thing. In this example, and I think this is why Jesus uses this example, the Pharisees exonerated David.

They consider David their great king of Israel, which he wants. But they exonerate him even though he clearly violated the commands about the showbread that was reserved to be eaten only by the priest, which was clearly written down as we saw back in Leviticus.

But at the same time that they uphold David, even though he broke a command about eating the showbread on the Sabbath, incidentally. But at the same time they are standing there condemning Jesus and his disciples for not following the man-made rules that the Pharisees had come up that weren't found anywhere in the laws of God.

So they had double standards. They had inconsistent standards. They excuse it for David, even though it is written explicitly in the Torah that the showbread is only to be eaten by the priest at the tabernacle. But they condemned Jesus and his disciples for taking a few handfuls of grain which violate nothing about the real Sabbath commandment there. So that is what I mean when they have double standards and consistent standards. They have different rules. And worse than that is what they are really doing is they are elevating their own rules above the Ten Commandments. Above God's commandment to remember the Sabbath day and keep it holy. They are elevating their own rules above God's original Sabbath commandment. They are in Exodus 20 and Deuteronomy chapter 5. So they are saying that their rules actually have greater authority than the Torah itself, the law of God itself. So Jesus' argument is that if they consider David to be innocent of violating what God in the Torah explicitly said about the showbread, how much more should they consider Jesus and his Talmadiim, his disciples, innocent for disregarding man-made laws that are nowhere written in the Bible? Follow that. Is that clear? Are we on the same page?

So, Jesus said elsewhere that to elaborate on this point a little bit, Jesus said elsewhere, he's asked, what are the two great commandments? Or what is the greatest commandment? This was actually a debate among a lot of the religious leaders in the first century. You find it reflected in other writings of that time. And what did Jesus say was the first and greatest commandment? You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul. And the second commandment is like it. You shall love your neighbor as yourself.

So that was the great commandment. And the next one that is like it, you shall love your neighbor as yourself. So had these Pharisees really been motivated by those two commandments to love God with all their heart and with all their soul and with all their mind, and to love God's Word and His instruction there, what would they have first tried to do in a situation like that?

They would have first tried to learn what the needs were of their fellow men, their neighbor. Who is their neighbor? Jesus and the disciples. You shall love your neighbor as yourself is the second great commandment. So they would have tried to determine what their needs were and if these men are hungry, what should you have done according to the law?

You should invite them into your home and give them a meal. That's loving your neighbor. Loving your neighbor isn't condemning them over a man-made rule and regulation that really has nothing to do with the original Sabbath commandment. So they are actually not only violating the laws of God, they are not loving God, they are not loving His Word, they are elevating their own rules and regulations above the commandments of God, and they are certainly not showing love to their neighbor, to Jesus and the disciples by condemning them for violating their own man-made rules there.

So that's what they would have done if they really truly wanted to obey God and obey His laws. But instead, they are condemning the innocent. And then Jesus, and this is why I think this is the point that He is making, then He gives another parallel example here. Matthew 12, starting in verse 5 through 8. After giving the example of David and the Shobred, Jesus says, Or have you not read in the law that on the Sabbath the priests in the temple profane the Sabbath and are blameless? Some of you I know are hunters. You know what it's like to butcher an animal.

It's hard work. It's a lot of work. What was required in butchering the Sabbath? They had to offer two lambs at the temple on the Sabbath day. The offerings are actually doubled. It's twice as much work for the priests on the Sabbath. You have to butcher and sacrifice twice as many animals. In this case, it's lambs. So what do you have to do? Well, you have to light a fire. You have to have the firewood there. It takes a lot of wood to completely burn an animal. Have you ever tried to do that? It takes a lot of wood. You've got to light the fire. You've got to have the wood there.

You've got to butcher the animal. Kill it. Cut its throat. Skin it. Prepare it for sacrifice. You have to lift the animal up on the altar to be sacrificed. You have to stoke the fires for several hours because it takes, again, a long time to completely burn an animal. So it was hard work. It was hard work that was not allowed anywhere else on the Sabbath day. But it was work that was allowed in the temple for the daily sacrifices to be carried out and actually double on the Sabbath day.

The bottom line is that some of the Sabbath prohibitions work that was indeed work on the Sabbath needed to be suspended so that the important and holy duties of the priest could take place here at the temple. That was part of the worship of God. The Pharisees knew this, the disciples knew this, and everybody knew this. Technically speaking, the priest violated the Sabbath every day by having to work to offer the sacrifices.

However, in this case, God clearly allowed and even commanded that kind of work and did not hold the priest guilty for that. So the parallel with the situation with David is that the priests were breaking the letter of the law, as David had broken the letter of the law by eating the showbread there. But as with David, God allowed exceptions in the case of greater good. That's the bottom line. Jesus' point here is that, as with David, the Pharisees considered the priests innocent of what God clearly said about working on the Sabbath.

So if the priests were innocent, how much more should they consider Jesus and His disciples innocent for disregarding man-made regulations that the Pharisees and Ramis had come up with that are nowhere found in God's Word that God never gave? So it's a parallel situation. Jesus is telling them, you make excuses or not excuses. You didn't consider David guilty when he took the showbread, which was unlawful for him to eat. And you don't consider the priests guilty for working on the Sabbath, every Sabbath at the temple. So why are you considering me and my disciples guilty when we're not even violating the Sabbath command that was given?

So that's the same point. They have one standard for David and the priests, but they have a totally different standard that they are then applying to Jesus and His disciples. And they are again elevating their own rules above the laws of God as given in the Torah. So it's important to understand this. Jesus is nowhere arguing for suspending the Sabbath day as some people read and misinterpret this. What He's saying is that their man-made rules are actually making the Sabbath a burden and not the kind of delight that God intended the Sabbath to be.

And then He transitions a bit and He gives them a real zinger. Here in verse 6 He appeals to His own authority here. In verse 6 when He says, Yet I say to you that in this place right here, right now, there is one greater than the temple. And He is of course referring to Himself as Divine, as a Divine Son of God. In other words, if they thought the temple, the Pharisees, didn't think the temple was holy because that was viewed as God's dwelling place.

But here was God standing before them in the flesh, and He is much greater than this physical temple. That's His point here. But that seems to go right over their heads that they miss that. Or at least if there is some reaction that's not recorded, they're in the Gospels for us. And then He closes this with a quote from Hosea 6 and verse 6. But if you had known what this means, I desire mercy and not sacrifice, you would not have condemned the guiltless. So He says, they are guiltless. They're innocent. They have not violated the Sabbath. He clearly says that. For the Son of Man is Lord, even of the Sabbath. So He says clearly that He and His disciples are guiltless because they had not violated the Sabbath at all.

They had violated some of the Pharisees' regulations that they interpreted as being work on the Sabbath, but they had not worked on the Sabbath and had nothing to apologize for, nothing to feel guilty about. One of the study questions I sent out here, and this is a bit of a discussion, is when He quotes from Hosea here, is this a RIMAS? RIMAS, for those of you who haven't heard that term before, you may want to go back on our website, denver.ucg.org, and search for RIMAS.

I gave a whole sermon on this several years ago. It's a teaching method that was used very commonly among rabbis in the first century. Scholars have counted up between three and four hundred examples in the Gospels of it. Not just in the Gospels, but Matthew uses it, Mark uses it, John Luke, John the Baptizer uses it, Jesus uses it repeatedly. It's a teaching technique where the word in Hebrew means hint or clue or look back.

The way it worked is if you were teaching to a large audience and you wanted to make a point, you would say something that they would immediately recognize. For instance, if I said, my country is the sweet land of liberty, the icing. So you know the rest of the story. The teacher only needs to quote a line or phrase or verse. Because biblical literacy was so high at that time, most of these were expected of young men to try to memorize as much of what we call the Old Testament as they could. They were very scripturally literate. Jesus only has to quote a verse, but that is only part of the message.

The entire message is what goes before and after that verse. That's what a rim-as is. Again, go back and listen to that sermon. You can learn a whole lot more about it. But Jesus does it time and time and time again in the Gospel. The inside, I think, is a classic example of a rim-as.

We're on the surface. He says one thing, but what he really means is the whole context of that verse. With that in mind, let's look at where we find this phrase, I desire mercy and not sacrifice. We find it over in Hebrews 6. It's actually verse 6, but I want to read what goes before and what is after it.

I'm reading this from the New Living Translation, which I think makes this much more clear. What's the context first before we read this? The context is about God through Hosea is condemning Israel and Judah for their unfaithfulness to God. They claim to love God. They claim to obey Him and to want to worship Him and be faithful to Him.

But the reality, as we know from the history of the Old Testament, is quite different. As we read this, what I want you to do to catch the point of the Rimes is to imagine Jesus as God saying this directly to the Pharisees. You'll see how well it fits. Verse 4, God says, O Israel and Judah, and imagine Jesus saying this, O Pharisees, what should I do with you? Ask the Lord. For your love vanishes like the morning mist and disappears like dew in the sunlight. We don't have many foggy mornings here in Colorado because the air is so dry, but you go out on a foggy morning and within a few minutes the mist, the fog, is gone.

It's burned off. We don't have many mornings with a lot of dew for the same reason there. But dew, as soon as the sun hits it, within a couple of minutes, it's gone. It's like it was never there. And God says, This is what your love toward me is like. It's like a fog in the morning, a mist that is there for a few minutes and disappears, and it's gone.

It's like the dew that as soon as the sun hits it, it's gone. I sent my prophets to cut you to pieces, in other words, to warn them. And he sent prophet after prophet after prophet to warn them of where their ways are going. I sent my prophets to cut you to pieces. I have slaughtered you with my words, threatening you with death, with the consequences of them continuing on the path that they were going in. My judgment will strike you as surely as day follows night.

I want you to be merciful. I don't want your sacrifices. I desire mercy and not sacrifice, and I think this captures the meaning better here. I want you to be merciful. I don't want your sacrifices. I don't want your empty rituals. I want you to know God. That's more important than burnt offerings.

But like Adam, you did what? You broke my covenant and rebelled against me. So is this a romance? Is this the real message behind what Jesus says? I desire mercy and not sacrifice. I think it is. I think it absolutely is. In other words, like Israel and Judah of old, the Pharisees claimed to love God, but their love was fickle, like a mourning mist or a mourning dew that was there for a few minutes and gone. And God warned them again and again. God warned the Pharisees through all the Old Testament prophets but also through John the Baptist and through Jesus. But they refused to listen.

And to repent. So they are bringing God's judgment on themselves and on the nation.

And forty years later, the Roman Empire, the Roman armies would come in and that was the end of Judah. So God didn't really want the rules and the regulations and the sacrifices and all of this that they were so scrupulous about. What God wanted was a changed heart, a changed understanding. He wanted them to come to know God and what God was really like and that He was a God of mercy. And instead, they broke God's commandment and rebelled against Him.

And that is a perfect description of the attitude of the Pharisees. So yes, I would say this is indeed a Ramesh. It's a Ramesh that fits absolutely perfectly with the message that Jesus had toward the Pharisees. And it's a devastating indictment of their attitude and their approach because they did not understand mercy. What's Jesus' whole point in giving these examples of David and the Shobran and the priest doing sacrifice in the temple on the Sabbath? The point is there are times when you make exceptions for the law you extend mercy because there are extenuating circumstances. And the Pharisees just didn't get that. They didn't get that at all. And then Jesus concludes the section Matthew 12 and verse 8 by saying, here at the bottom of the screen, For the Son of man is Lord, even of the Sabbath.

The Son of man is Lord, even of the Sabbath. So Jesus Christ was the Creator of the Sabbath. We'll prove that in just a few minutes here. But as the Creator of the Sabbath, He certainly knew how to keep the Sabbath day because He's the one who created it. He knew what it was for. He knew why it was designed, what its intention was.

So Jesus kept the Sabbath perfectly throughout His life and ministry there. He said, This is a day to show mercy and to do good and to be a blessing for mankind and not a burden as the Pharisees had made it.

So the Pharisees had taken something that God intended to be a blessing to mankind and turned it into a burden that was almost impossible for people to enjoy. Actually, for lack of time, I'm going to skip over a few passages here that I was just going to show examples of. This is actually a continuation of a greater theme that starts in Matthew 11 and continues on through this chapter. But for lack of time, we'll skip over that for right now.

Let's pick it up now. Mark's account adds another phrase here to pick up on. Mark 2, verses 27 and 28. Then He said to them, The Sabbath was made for man, and not man for the Sabbath. Therefore the Son of Man is also Lord of the Sabbath. So the Sabbath was indeed created to be a blessing for mankind. Let's notice Isaiah 58, verses 13-14. God says here, telling Israel, If you turn away your foot from the Sabbath, from doing your pleasure on my holy day, and you call the Sabbath a delight, the holy day of the Lord honorable, and shall honor Him, not doing your own ways, nor finding your own pleasure, nor speaking your own words, then you shall delight yourself in the Lord, and I will cause you to ride on the high hills of the earth, and feed you with the heritage of Jacob your father.

The mouth of the Lord has spoken. So we see here clearly from Isaiah, and of course this is not long before Judah is taken into captivity for Sabbath breaking. And God here explains to them the purpose of the Sabbath, that it's supposed to be a delight. It's supposed to be a time for drawing near to God, not doing your own thing, not doing your own pleasure, talking about your own words, and so on. So the Sabbath is to be a day of delight and blessing.

And if we view the Sabbath as a burden, then something is wrong, whether either our understanding or the way we keep the Sabbath day. And then, Mark says again, verse 28, that Jesus is the Lord of the Sabbath. Why? Why is He called Himself the Lord of the Sabbath?

First and foremost, because He created the Sabbath day. So if He created it, He made it and He owns it. That's why He says it is the Lord's day. He is the Lord of the Sabbath.

Let's notice that and prove that. Genesis 2, verses 2 and 3, And on the seventh day God ended 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 Sabbath day and sanctified it, because in it he rested from all his work which God had created and made. So who is this God here who is creating, created the universe, created all things, and then rested on the Sabbath day and created the Sabbath by resting on it? Well, it's the one who would become Jesus Christ. Let's prove that briefly here with a few scriptures. The way I remember this, just remember Colossians 1, John 1, and Hebrews 1. Colossians 1, John 1, Hebrews 1. Just remember those first chapters. There. So notice Colossians 1. Paul says, For by him, referring to Jesus Christ, all things were created, that are in heaven and that are on earth, visible and invisible, the physical world and also the spiritual world as well, whether thrones or dominions or principalities or powers. All things were created through him and for him, Jesus Christ. And he is before all things, and in him all things consist. And he is the head of the body, the church, who is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, that in all things he may have the preeminence. Let's look at another one chapter, John 1. In the beginning was the word, parallel with Genesis. John clearly links this with Genesis 1. John 1, John 1, John 1, John 1, John 1, in the beginning was the word, and the word was with God and the word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through him, and without him nothing was made that was made. Clear reference to Genesis and the creation, but who is the God doing the creation? As he says here, the Word. The one who became Jesus Christ. John goes on later and says, and the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, referring to Jesus Christ. Let's look at the third one, Hebrews 1, 1 and 2. God, who at various times and at various ways spoke in time past to the fathers by the prophets, as in these last days spoken to us by his Son, whom he has appointed heir of all things, through whom also he made the worlds. So again, three chapters there, three passages that clearly say that Jesus Christ was the Creator. He was one who created everything in Genesis 1 and including the Sabbath day.

So now let's ask the second question. Who gave the Ten Commandments? Including the Sabbath Day. Remember the Sabbath Day to keep it holy, the Fourth Commandments. Exodus 20, verses 1 and 8 through 10. And God spoke all these words, saying, and skipping through the first three commandments, down to verse 8, Remember the Sabbath Day to keep it holy, six days you shall labor and do all your work, but the Sabbath Day is the Sabbath of the Lord your God. So who was this God who spoke the Ten Commandments? And actually wrote them with his finger on the tablets of stone. Well, let's notice we covered this last class in John chapter 5. Let's review that. John 5, verse 37. And the Father Himself who sent me has testified of me. These are Jesus' own words. You have neither heard His voice at any time nor seen His form. So if it wasn't the Father who spoke the Ten Commandments, we just read about who was it. Well, it's the being who became Jesus Christ. Also John 1 and verse 18 and 1 John 4.12 say the same thing. No one has seen God, God the Father, at any time. 1 Timothy 6 and verse 16. Paul writes about God whom no man has seen or can see. Referring again to God the Father. So this God who spoke, who appeared on Mount Sinai to Moses and to the elders of Israel, who gave, who spoke the Ten Commandments, who wrote them with His finger on stone, was the one who became Jesus Christ. So, let's notice a couple of other scriptures. Hebrews 13 and verse 8. So did Jesus change His mind, did Jesus do away with the Sabbath that He created and that He commanded to be kept as a perpetual commandment? Hebrews 13.8. Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever. And Malachi 3.6. For I am the Lord, I do not change. I do not change. So again, very clearly, Christ is the Creator of the Sabbath, Christ commanded the Sabbath as one of the Ten Commandments, and twice we see that He does not change. He's the same yesterday, today, and forever. So the argument that Jesus is somehow doing away with the Sabbath here in this incident or the next one we'll read about, or anywhere else in the Gospels for that matter, just simply does not hold water. Jesus is the God who created the Sabbath, made it to be a blessing for mankind, enshrined it as one of the Ten Commandments, and He does not change. He's the same as when He created everything, when He gave that command, and when He walked this earth 2,000 years ago and confronted the Pharisees who had, frankly, corrupted and perverted the Sabbath day. So, let's see where we are in time. Okay, we might finish this up on time.

Next section, now we come to the section titled, Jesus Heals a Man with a Withered Hand on the Sabbath. So, continuation of confrontation with the Pharisees over the Sabbath day. Luke 6 and verses 6-8 will begin here in Luke's account. Now, it happened on another Sabbath, the reason I use Luke is that Luke makes it clear that this is a different Sabbath day.

Matthew and Mark make it sound like it's the same one, but Luke specifies it's a different one. That He entered the synagogue and taught. So, notice here what Jesus does on the synagogue of the Sabbath. He teaches. He teaches. That's what He does. Does this sound like somebody whose intent is to destroy, or annul, or get rid of the Sabbath day? No. He uses the Sabbath day to teach at the synagogue with other Sabbath keepers who are gathered there. Let's also notice Luke 4. We covered this earlier, but Luke 4 and verse 16, where Jesus returns to His hometown of Nazareth where He had been brought up.

As His custom was – in other words, this is what He does on a regular basis – He went into the synagogue on the Sabbath day and stood up to read. That's what He does. That's who He is. He's the Creator of the Sabbath. He knows how to keep the Sabbath. So, He goes to the synagogue, keeps the Sabbath, and uses it as a day for teaching. I might also mention here in passing that being a well-known rabbi, it was customary among the synagogues of that day.

We see it with Paul II and the book of Acts, that as a visiting rabbi, when a rabbi would come to a synagogue, he would normally be extended the invitation to teach on the Sabbath that day. We see that happening again and again with Jesus. We see it happening again and again in the book of Acts with the Apostle Paul, where they are invited to teach on the Sabbath day. Back to Luke 6 and verse 6 now. A letter part of verse 6. A man was there whose right hand was withered. As we begin to notice going through the Gospel of Luke, Luke includes details that Matthew, Mark, and John leave out. Luke, for instance, includes more details about children, about women, and about Gentiles.

Those are three groups that Luke tends to include that the other Gospel writers don't. Women, children, the underprivileged, you might say, and Gentiles. Luke is a Gentile. He is writing his Gospel primarily to Gentiles, so he includes those kinds of details. But Luke also tends to include more details about the people that Christ heals. Luke seems to be a very compassionate person in his personality and it shows up in his writings here.

As a result of that, he tends to emphasize the compassionate, the merciful side of Jesus Christ. Notice here that Luke includes the detail that a man was there whose right hand was withered. One of the study questions I sent out, this is why you should read the study questions because it will save a lot of time here and give you some of the background of where we are going.

Why the right hand? At that time and in that culture, everybody was right-handed. You always used your right hand for important functions. You always ate with your right hand. You always wrote with your right hand. You worked with your right hand. Everything you did honorably was with your right hand.

That was the honorable hand. That was the right hand as opposed to the wrong hand there. You see this reflected throughout the Bible as well with phrases such as Jesus sitting at the right hand of God and with the apostles jockeying to see who is going to be seated at his right hand in the kingdom. That was the important hand. That was the honorable hand there. In the Middle East today, if you go and visit there, particularly in the Arab cultures because they have changed very little over the last couple of thousand years, if you touch somebody with your left hand or if you eat with your left hand in an Arab culture, they are going to be horrified by that.

That is just totally socially unacceptable. Why? Well, because in that part of the world, for thousands of years, you ate with your right hand and if you went to the bathroom to be blunt, you wiped with your left hand. They didn't have toilet paper.

Your left hand was viewed as perpetually unclean. It was. It was. You ate with your right. Your left was viewed as the unclean hand because that is what you wiped with when you went to the bathroom. What does that mean then? Why does Luke point out that detail? Again, Luke is a compassionate person. He reflects Jesus' compassion toward people.

So what did it mean for this man with a withered right hand? I don't know if any of you have ever known anybody with a withered hand. I have a friend back East who has a withered right hand. It is hard to notice because he keeps it pretty much hidden, but that is the way it is. This is what it looks like. This helps us picture what is going on here.

It is not pretty. A withered hand, or the word can mean paralyzed, shriveled. It is apparently a birth defect in this case. Possibly an injury, but we just don't know. It is not pretty and the hand is useless. The man's right hand was useless. He couldn't do anything with it. We had to do everything with his left hand. He had to dress one-handed with his left hand. He had to work if he could work with his left hand.

He had to eat with his left hand and wipe with his left hand. Consequently, he was viewed as perpetually unclean or disgusting. Not that he is unclean in the sense that a leper is unclean and can't physically associate with people because this man is in a synagogue. He is not under the restrictions of a leper, but he is viewed as perpetually disgusting because of this condition with his hand.

Because of that, he wasn't really an accepted member of society because he had to do everything with his unclean hand. People just viewed that as disgusting as they do today in the Arab cultures of the Middle East. So Jesus picks this man, in a synagogue, probably 100 or more people there. This man is probably not the only one who is sick there or the only one who needs healing. But he picks this man out of the synagogue and makes it a point to heal him. Notice the man doesn't ask to be healed.

There is no indication of that. Jesus picks the man out and chooses to heal him on that Sabbath day. Somebody who is a social, undesirable, an outcast, you might say. And he is going to change the man's life forever because Jesus is merciful and compassionate. So going back to Luke 6 and verse 7, let's pick it up. Verse 7, So the scribes and Pharisees watched Jesus closely whether he would heal on the Sabbath, and what is their motivation that they might find an accusation against him?

Think about that statement for a minute because it is easy just to read over and gloss over that. The Pharisees are watching him whether he is going to heal on the Sabbath, blah, blah, blah. Let's go on to the next verse. It is easy to read over the implications of what is said there. This is really profound because what it is saying here is that the scribes and the Pharisees know that here is a man, Jesus Christ, who has and who can and who does perform divine miracles of healing. And they are in the synagogue that day hoping that he will perform a miracle.

Why? So they can accuse him of breaking the Sabbath. How much sense does that make? How much sense does that make? They are so warped, they are so twisted and corrupted in their thinking that even though they know this man is a miracle worker because they have no doubt by this point seen some of the people that he has miraculously healed, but they have convinced themselves in their own warped thinking that they aren't the work of God, but this is actually the work of the devil.

As we'll see a little bit later in the Gospels, that's what they attribute his healings to. Talk about sick. The sickness isn't the problem of the people. The sickness is in their minds and their thinking. It's how bad it had gotten for them. To understand this, let's look a little bit more deeply into their regulations about healing on the Sabbath.

That just sounds bizarre to us. But their basic approach was that if the situation was a matter of life and death, yes, you could give medical aid, which is healing, on a Sabbath.

They're not thinking in terms of divine healing. They're thinking of helping somebody to be healed, to be well, to be whole again. If the person was in danger of dying, you could do whatever was necessary to save the person's life.

But otherwise, if it wasn't a matter of life and death, the person could be healed or cared for on any of the other six days of the week. They had very specific rules about this. For example, and I just learned these in the last week or two, researching this, if you broke your arm or your leg, you could not reset the bone on the Sabbath. If you dislocated your shoulder, your wrist, your knee, your foot, your ankle, something like that, and if you ever experienced that excruciating pain, and you had to suffer and wait until after the Sabbath to get the bone or the dislocation reset, that's how strict their rules were and how weird and bizarre their rules were.

No mercy, no exceptions. None whatsoever. If a person's normal routine was to bathe or wrench your hands in cold water, you could do that on the Sabbath day. But if you had dislocated your wrist and you wanted to soak your wrist in cold water, today we'd use an ice pack, but they didn't have ice so they'd soak it in cold water or pour cold water over it to relieve the pain.

You couldn't do that on the Sabbath because that was promoting healing and that was forbidden. If there were foods or drinks that were consumed as both food and medicine, you could consume those on the Sabbath. You might think of oranges and vitamin C if you've got a cold or something like that. Go gorge on oranges or tangerines or something that's high in vitamin C. You could do that on a normal day or if you weren't sick. But if you had a cold on the Sabbath, you couldn't eat those oranges on that day because that might promote healing.

You couldn't do that on the Sabbath. You could any other day. You could eat the oranges on the Sabbath if you didn't have a cold, but if you have a cold, the oranges might help you. So you can't do it on the Sabbath. It's just warped thinking, twisted thinking there. If you had a stomach ache, maybe, or diarrhea, and there were foods or herbs or drinks or something that would help that, you were not allowed to consume those on the Sabbath day.

Here's the one that really got me. It was very common in that day to apply olive oil. We would think of hand lotions, pretty dry climates there. So they would use olive oil as a lotion for cracked and dry hands, or arms, or legs, or wherever. If you normally apply olive oil to your body on the Sabbath, anointing, as it's sometimes called in Scripture, you could do that unless you had a cut or scrape. Then you could put olive oil everywhere else but on the cut or scrape because that would promote healing.

This is how nutty their reasoning got. You could put a bandage on somebody if somebody's cut their arm and they're bleeding on the Sabbath. You can put a bandage on there to stop the bleeding, but you can't put a bandage on if it's got olive oil or some kind of antiseptic or medicine or healing ointment or salve on it because that is promoting healing. This is how picky I talk about what was considered work and all the subcategories of work.

These are taken from these various subcategories here and this is how nutty and how legalistic their rules got regarding healing on the Sabbath. Again, their thinking is we're not going to give an itch. We're not going to let somebody start pulling on that thread in the garment because who knows where it's going to lead. This is why they make such a big deal about Jesus' healing on the Sabbath day. They would honestly, according to their rules, rather see somebody suffer on the Sabbath day than be relieved by giving them aid, giving them comfort, by setting a broken bone, or giving them something that's going to relieve their stomach ache or whatever.

Then Jesus comes along and he says to them essentially, that's nonsense. That's nonsense. You don't know anything about the mind and the character and the thinking of God. That he is a God of mercy, a God of compassion, a God of kindness, a God of tenderness. So that's the background of what's going on. You've got two totally different mindsets at work in the synagogue on that day. You've got Jesus who sees a man with a withered hand who's been an outcast for his life, assuming he was born that way with a paralyzed hand.

And you've got these people who think according to these rules, this is how you keep the Sabbath. This is how you're honoring and obeying God. So continuing in verse 8 here, notice this, But Jesus knew their thoughts, and said to the man who had the withered hand, arise and stand here. And he arose and stood. And let's switch over to Mark now, because Mark tells the man to rise and stand here.

Jesus is apparently at the front of the synagogue like this. As Mark says, he said to the man who had the withered hand, step forward. In other words, he picks him out of the back row or wherever he is and tells him, come up here and cut something to show. And then he said to them, Jesus has the man step forward in front of everybody.

And then he said to the man who had the withered hand, step forward. Then he said to them, to everybody, it's an inclusive them, not just the Pharisees, or not just to the man, but to everybody in the synagogue that day, he asked this question, is it lawful on the Sabbath to do good or to do evil, to save life or to kill?

But they kept silent. They kept silent. Nobody wants to commit themselves. Kind of like when I ask a question in these studies here, nobody answers. They keep silent. Not that there's anything wrong with that. Verse 5, and when he had looked around at them, notice this, Jesus of motion here, when he had looked around at them with anger.

With anger. I think Jesus can heal out of anger. Well, he does here. He does here. Being grieved, and that word means sorrow, being grieved by the hardness of their hearts, he said to the man, stretch out your hand. And Mark says here that Jesus heals a man out of a combination of anger at their hard-heartedness, but also sorrow and grief at their attitudes, at their hearts.

Those are the emotions that Jesus is feeling at this moment. Anger at their hard-heartedness and stubbornness, but grief and sorrow because they are so blinded and unwilling to recognize the fact that God is standing right there before them and they can't see it. And they can't see it. Matthew, let's turn over to Matthew now, notice another detail. This is why we have the harmony. We compare all three accounts. Matthew adds another detail in Matthew 12, verses 11-14. And the others don't include this. Then he, Jesus said to them, What man is there among you?

He has one sheep. And if it falls into a pit on the Sabbath, will not lay hold of it and lift it out. A person has one sheep. That means he is a pretty poor person. That sheep means a lot to him and his family. That's probably the source of milk and cheese for his kids. That's probably the source of wool for clothing, for the family and all of that.

He's got one sheep and the sheep has fallen into a pit, probably a cistern. We've talked about cisterns, the water storage chambers before. That's why you'd have these pits mentioned in the Bible a lot. They're water storage chambers. Of how much more value, then, is a man than a sheep? Therefore, it is lawful to do good on the Sabbath. The answer here is obvious. If man has a sheep and it falls into a pit or cistern on the Sabbath, of course he's going to go and relieve the poor animal's suffering and lift it up out of the pit.

And if it's legal, Jesus says, for to do that with an animal that's in trouble, doesn't this apply even more so to a human being who needs help, who's in a bad way or a bad situation there? And verse 13, then he said to the man, Stretch out your hand. He stretched it out and it was restored as whole as the other. Now, a couple of interesting things here. Does Jesus touch the man? Lay hands on him?

No. Does Jesus say to the man, Be healed? No. Does Jesus pray to the Father, God, please heal this man? No. Jesus does one thing. He just says, Stretch out your hand. Now, why does he do that? I think there's something going on here that I think, considering that I know Jesus' emotion right now is anger and grief and sorrow, I think he's giving him a dig. Digging it a little bit deeper there. And essentially saying, Okay, you say that I can't help this man on the Sabbath.

I can't bandage his withered hand. I can't put medicine on it. I can't put olive oil on it. I can't do anything like that. I can't anoint it with oil or salves or anything like that. So I won't. So watch this. So watch this. And the man's whole hand, as he reaches it out, is made perfectly well and whole and good. And they can't accuse him of anything. They can't say he bandaged it. They can't say he anointed it.

They can't say he touched the man. They can't say he prayed for the man to be healed. They can't say he asked God to heal him. Nothing. All he did was say, Stretch out your hand. And the hand is made whole. And they don't have any grounds to accuse him of healing on the Sabbath because there's nothing to accuse him of. All that Jesus did is tell the man to stretch out his hand.

And he's healed there. I think that's pretty incredible. And I think they got the point. Because what is their reaction? Verse 14. Then the Pharisees went out and plotted against him how they might kill him. And that's what the word means. It's used elsewhere in Matthew's Gospel and elsewhere to kill, to murder somebody. This is so incredibly sad that rather than rejoicing that this man who has been an outcast from society, a reject, has now been healed and now can function in society, can work to provide for himself or his family if he has one who can be a normal part of the community, instead they plot for how they can murder Jesus.

And again, we're only a year and a half into Christ's ministry at this point. And already they're looking for ways to kill him. Mark adds the detail here. We won't read this, but adds that the Pharisees then conspire with the Herodians against him. Who are the Herodians? Well, the Herodians. You recognize the name of Herod in there. These are the family, the sons, the descendants of Herod the Great that came at the time of Jesus' birth who killed the babies in Bethlehem.

And his offspring were a whole lot better, but two of them ruled in different parts of the Holy Land at that time. One was Herod Agrippa who lived and reigned over Galilee, this area, and lived at Tiberius, just about eight miles around the shore of Sia Galilee from Capernaum. And the Herodians wield a lot of political power. They are, you might say, in bed with the Romans there because they rule at the pleasure of the Romans. The Romans are the ones in charge, but they've kind of subcontracted the governance, you might say, to some of Herod's sons.

And the Pharisees don't have the legal authority to put anybody to death.

But the Romans do. So they are conspiring here against the Herodians who normally they wouldn't have anything to do with because the Herodians are viewed as being in bed with the Romans and they're corrupt and all of that. But the Herodians, because they are allied with the Romans, could possibly influence the Romans into coming up with a legal way to have Jesus executed. So that's what's going on there. So we have some strange bedfellows here conspiring to kill Jesus, people who wouldn't normally be allied together at all. But here they are.

And now we move on to the next section here. I'm going to need to pick this up pace a bit. We now move to the next section about Jesus' healing large multitudes by the Sea of Galilee. Well, it's been a lot of time on this. Let's pick up the story here in Mark 3, verses 7-12. But Jesus withdrew with his disciples to the Sea of Galilee, and a great multitude from Galilee followed him, and from Judea and Jerusalem and Idomea, and beyond the Jordan, and those from Tyre and Sidon, a great multitude, when they heard how many things he was doing, came to him. So Mark tells us here, in contrast to the Pharisees who want to kill Jesus, you've got large crowds coming from all over that area coming to hear Jesus, and to hear his teaching, and in some cases to be healed by him as well. That's a powerful motivation.

And some of them come from long distances. Let's look at this on a map. They're up around the Sea of Galilee up here. Jerusalem is down about right here. So people are coming from Idomea, which is down here. They're also coming from Tyre and Sidon, which is up here in the Gentile areas on the coast. Let's see, where else did I mention they're coming from? Well, from Galilee, all around here, from Judea, all around here. So you've got people coming from literally all over this region up here to here. Jesus' teaching and so on. You've also got a map on the back of your Harmony where those areas are listed as well. Continuing back here in verse 9.

So he told his disciples that a small boat should be kept ready for him because of the multitude, lest they should crush him. You've got so many people crowding in that there's some danger of Jesus actually being trampled there by so many people. Verse 10, for he healed many, so that as many as had afflictions pressed about him to touch him. And the unclean spirits, whenever they saw him, fell down before him and cried out, saying, You are the Son of God. But he sternly warned them that they should not make him known. So this is one of the times when Jesus does many miracles and tells people not to go out and tell other people about it. Why does he do that?

He seems to do it depending on the geographic location. Let's look at a more detailed map here of the Sea of Galilee. This takes place somewhere on the Sea of Galilee. It's not specifically stated where. But we covered this in a message on this about why Jesus settled in Capernaum and the historical background of that area. Where would this take place? Well, around the Sea of Galilee you have these distinctly different cultural groups.

Here around Tiberius, that's where Herod Antipas is. He's the one who put John the Baptizer in jail. You never see Jesus and the Gospels going to this area. Why? Probably because the same thing might happen to him. Get thrown in jail as a threat to his reign. Over here, this light green area, that's all Gentile area. This area is called the Decapolis. It's ten cities. They're all Greco-Roman pagans over there. You've got Jesus carrying out his ministry along this northern shore up here. Here's Capernaum, here's Corazun, here's Bethsaida. Most of his ministry takes place right in this area. But over here, there's another group of people called the Zealots. In that sermon, we talked about how people came and tried to take Jesus by force and make him king. Who would those people have been? Probably the Zealots, living up here around Bethsaida. There's the Jordan River, that's kind of the dividing line.

But why does Jesus heal people and say, don't go out and tell anybody about it? Well, probably because there's a lot of Zealots in that area. And if word gets out that there's this miracle working rabbi nearby who can multiply food and who can heal people of all kinds of injuries, wounds, sicknesses, and so on, the Zealots will get the idea, hey, he'd be a great general and king. He can feed thousands of people. He can heal soldiers when they're wounded. Let's make him general commander of our armies. That's what they think when they hear about this Messiah.

I think Jesus, when he says, don't tell anybody about it, it's because he doesn't want word to get around up here in the Zealot territories and break out. They come and try to make him king by force, as we read about happened at least one time in the Gospel. Incidentally, this is where the rebellion breaks out that will lead to the Jewish war and end with the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 AD. So Jesus doesn't want the word to get out lest it mess up the timetable in God's plan, in God's purpose and timing for his ministry and for his death.

As it said there, he sternly warned them, those whom he had healed, that they should not make him known. Continuing in Matthew 12, we see a little bit more information there in the account. Verse 16, Yet he warned them not to make him known, that it might be fulfilled, which was spoken by Isaiah the prophet, saying, Behold, my servant whom I have chosen, my beloved in whom my soul is well pleased, I will put my spirit upon him, and he will declare justice to the Gentiles.

This is quoting from Isaiah 42, verses 1-4. You might want to write that down in your notes.

Continuing with the prophecy, He will not quarrel nor cry out, nor will anyone hear his voice in the streets. A bruised reed he will not break, and smoking flax he will not quench, till he sends forth justice to victory, and in his name, Gentiles, will trust. This is both a quotation in Matthew translating and paraphrasing from Isaiah 42, 1-4, which is a prophecy of the Messiah. Both about His first coming and about His second coming, because there are aspects of the prophecy fulfilled at different times.

As this prophecy says, in His first coming, He will not quarrel nor cry out. That means He will not argue. He will not be getting into arguments with people as to whether He is the Messiah or not.

He would just simply and matter-of-factly go about doing His work.

Only at His second coming would He then be the conqueror who sends forth justice to victory, and in whose name all of the Gentiles or the nations would trust.

What about this part? This is a question that comes up from time to time. The part about a bruised reed He will not break, and smoking flax He will not quench. It is hard for us to understand because we are very far removed from that culture. But I think what this is saying is that Jesus would be an encourager. These two illustrations of bruised reed and smoking flax are referring to people or types of people, the downtrodden people. In other words, some people are like a bruised reed. If you are familiar with reeds, they are easily bent and broken. They are a water plant generally. They grow near water. They are soft. They are not hard wood like sticks and trees and that sort of thing. They are not very strong. And a bruised reed is one that is even weaker. A breeze can come along and blow a bruised reed over.

So I think what this is saying is that Jesus wouldn't break a bruised reed. In other words, somebody who is bent, who is weak, who is suffering. Instead, He would encourage that. He would strengthen that person. And He does that with us. He does that with people. And parallel with that is what is a smoking flax? What in the world is that talking about? Well, essentially on the front of your harmony here. A flax is what they would use for wicks for the oil lamps here. They would take flax and they would roll it in their hands and make a wick out of it, insert it in the oil and the oil would be soaked up and burn. That was the wick for an oil lamp.

So if the flax is smoking, what is it saying? Well, it is saying that it is almost out of fuel. There is more smoke than flame coming up. The flame is flickering and starting to put out a lot of smoke, which means it is about to die. It is exhausting its fuel there. It doesn't have much fuel or the wick itself is almost burn up and about to go out. And sometimes we are like that as human beings. We are not putting out a lot of light. We are putting out a lot of smoke because our flame is about to go out. We are losing our strength. We are losing our power. But the point here being that he will not extinguish that. Instead, he will help it. He will put more oil on to feed the flame. He will help. He will encourage people in that kind of circumstance and get the flame burning again. If this is indeed what it means, and I think it is, the New Living Translation of Matthew 12 captures this quite well. Notice the way this is translated.

He will not fight or shout or get into arguments. The Messiah will not. He will not raise his voice in public. He will not crush those who are weak or quench the smallest hope until he brings full justice with his final victory at his return and the resurrection of the saints. Then his name will be the hope of all the world. Now we come to the last part here. I will reprear this quite quickly. That is the choosing of the twelve apostles. I will just cut to the chase. You can read the two lists there. One of the study questions I sent out is, why are the lists different? Because if you compare them, you see the names mostly the same except for near the end of it, where you see Thaddeus in one list and Marx and Judas, the son of James, and Luke's list. So what's going on here? Was Thaddeus chosen and then flunked out and they kind of hit it under the rug and replaced him with Judas or vice versa?

Mark wrong? Is Luke wrong? What's going on there? Actually, the answer is quite simple there.

None of the Gospels explains this, but we do know it from other places. There's actually a hint in the same list. See somebody there with two names. Look at the top name on the list.

Simon Peter. He's got a Hebrew name and he's got a Greek name. Simon is well here. Let's show you this chart. Handy comparison here of several biblical figures in the New Testament. This individual, Judas, in Hebrew, his name would be Judah. Thaddeus is a Greek name. Simon Peter. Simon is Hebrew, Shimon, or Simeon, after one of the twelve patriarchs. Peter is the Greek word Petros, pebble, or rocky. He might have been called. Jesus might have nicknamed him rocky, maybe because of his dense head. Paul is a very famous one we're familiar with. Paul is the Greek name or Latin name Paulus. You see it in Latin literature all the time. Saul was his Hebrew name. Shaul, named after King Shaul. Saul, or as we would call him. Barnabas, another one of the figures who comes along in the book of Acts. His Hebrew name is Joseph, or Joseph, or Yousaf. Barnabas is a different language. Probably Greek. I wasn't able to find that for sure. The answer is pretty simple. That's what's going on. The individual just has two names. He has a Greek name and a Hebrew name, and that's fairly common there in the Scripture. We've run out of time, so we'll wrap it up there today. Then next time, later on in the month, I think the last Sabbath of the month, I will pick it up with a very key part of the Gospels. That is the Sermon on the Mount, which will be a very long and very detailed and very interesting study. We'll have a closing hymn, and that will conclude our services for today.