Mark 2:23-28--Jesus Is Lord of the Sabbath

Mark 2:23-28
English Standard Version
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Jesus Is Lord of the Sabbath
23 One Sabbath he was going through the grainfields, and as they made their way, his disciples began to pluck heads of grain. 24 And 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 was hungry, he and those who were with him: 26 how he entered the house of God, in the time of Abiathar the high priest, and ate the bread of the Presence, which it is not lawful for any but the priests to eat, and also gave it to those who were with him?” 27 And he said to them, “The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath. 28 So the Son of Man is lord even of the Sabbath.”

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For those that have been reading this blog for a while, this is one of my favorite names for Jesus as it is one of the ones that He gives Himself to tell everyone exactly who He is.  It is most upsetting to the Pharisees, Sadducees and rulers of the Law because the only person who had right to call Himself "Lord of the Sabbath" would be the Creator of all things who created the day of rest by Himself resting on the Sabbath day and making it holy.  Therefore, Jesus as the Creator of the Sabbath day was the only one with the right to define rules about what it meant for that day to be holy unto the LORD (which He did in the Old Testament, but the Pharisees came and made their own regulations that they held in equal standing to the Law to try to make sure that no one every broke the Sabbath day and they made it a heavy burden for the people that it was never supposed to be).

We'll see that after this point, Jesus will make a concerted effort to do more miracles on the Sabbath just to make the point that the Father is listening to Him and if He were breaking the Law by working on the Sabbath, the Father would not listen to Him.  Therefore, He must not be breaking the Law, and He must have a very special relationship with the Father who gives Him whatever He asks for.

As to this story, Jesus and the disciples are walking a short distance on the Sabbath day--since we know it was Jesus' habit to teach in the synagogues on the Sabbath, they are probably on their way to or from a synagogue.  And the disciples were hungry, so they reached out and took some of the heads of grain from the edge of a grain field that bordered the road (completely legal by the Law--in fact, that was the purpose of the fields going all the way up to the road and not harvesting that part of the field so that anyone who was hungry could reach out and take what they needed with their hand).  The Pharisees saw this and accused Jesus' disciples of working on the Sabbath and wanted to hold Jesus responsible for their actions.  Jesus then tells them a story from the Old Testament of how King David, whom they revered, and the high priest at the time named Abiathar committed an even greater transgression of taking the Showbread that was only for the priests and giving it to David and his warriors while they were running from King Saul.  David and his men were dying of hunger and came to the high priest for help, but the only food that was there in the Tabernacle at the time was the consecrated Showbread that was to be eaten by the priests in the Holy Place--it represented the twelve tribes of Israel who were to be holy before the LORD, but it also pointed to the body of Jesus that would be given in sacrifice to make all His people holy.  Jesus says that everyone involved in that incident should have died according to the letter of the Law, but the LORD did not kill David and his men, nor did He kill Abiathar for breaking the rules to provide David and his mean with the consecrated bread because he was acting to save their lives.

So Jesus says that the Sabbath day was made for man (look at the order of creation and how the Sabbath was created once Adam and Eve had already been created so that the first thing they learned was to rest in God's finished work).  Man was not created for the Sabbath where it would force him to die in order to be obedient to the Sabbath's rules and regulations that the Pharisees called Laws.  Jesus being Lord of the Sabbath was also able to suspend any such laws at any time that He needed to just like He did with David and his men.  If the one who was Lord of the Sabbath was right in front of the disciples and did not condemn them for their actions, then the Pharisees had no case against them.

This passage does not tell us that the Sabbath was abolished.  We see the Sabbath being observed by Jews and Christians far all throughout the New Testament and in the history of the early church.  It is much later that we see the idea of Christians trying to replace the seventh day Sabbath with a Sabbath day on what they called the Lord's Day, but most Christians today do nothing different other than go to church on Sunday.  It looks just like their Saturday other than that and looks absolutely nothing like the Sabbath day that is talked about in the Law.  Personally, I'm what people would call a Sabbatarian at heart meaning that I still believe that God never rescinded the commandment to remember the Sabbath day (the seventh day) and to keep it holy.  The purpose given for doing so in Exodus 20 still exists--it points us to remembering that in six days the LORD made heaven and earth and all that is in them, and on the seventh day, He rested.  It points us to a greater truth that we can rest in God's finished work--just like we rest in His finished work of salvation, and it points us to an even greater rest that will be coming for all those who are in Christ (see the book of Hebrews--I think chapters 3 and 4) that talk much about the rest that we will or will not enter based off of if we have put our faith and trust in His finished work.  Now Jesus is Lord of the Sabbath and we are still about the business of saving souls even on that day.  If Jesus tells us it's okay to do good on the Sabbath and to save a sheep that is in distress, it is definitely okay to do the "work" of evangelism and discipleship on that day to help save the soul of a man who is lost and whose soul is in peril.  (This truth is from another passage).  Do not be so quick to say that Sabbath is something only for Jews, for the earliest Christians observed it too (even going to the Temple on the Sabbath to worship the LORD there, and worshiping together with the Jews in the synagogues when they were away from Jerusalem, until the Jews drove them out of the synagogues.  Then they met in house churches on the Sabbath day for as long as we have New Testament history to look at).  The only major point here for me is that in all this, Jesus did not sin, for if He broke the Sabbath by healing and forgiving sins and everything else He did on the Sabbath that the Pharisees called "work," He would be a sinner that would not have been an acceptable sacrifice to take our place, yet the Father dis accept His sacrifice as proved by the Resurrection, and even in His death, we see the principle of resting in the finished work of the cross as Jesus did no visible work on the Sabbath day over which His body was interned in the tomb--we say He died on Friday (it may have been Thursday or Friday) ,but we are sure He was in the tomb from sundown on Friday to sundown on Saturday (the entire Day of Rest) and it was on Sunday morning shortly after the sun came up--the first day of the week to both the Jews and the Romans--that Jesus was raised from the dead.  There was no question to either group--Jews or Gentiles--that Resurrection Day (what we think John was referring to when he talked about The Lord's Day in the book of Revelation) was the first day of the week and the Sabbath Day was still the seventh day of the week.  Worshiping on Sunday points people to a great truth as well that we believe in the finished work of the death, burial and resurrection of Jesus, but it puts questions in the minds of others as to if the Church puts itself above the Law of God and if there is some power here on earth (like the Pope) that gets to supersede and change the Word of God.  It also drives a wedge between Jews (especially Jewish Christians) and Gentile Christians.  If a Jew is saved, what day of the week should they worship on?  Can they go to a church that worships on Sunday even though they believe they are supposed to worship on the Sabbath day and keep it holy?  Doesn't this create disfellowship between believing Jews and Gentiles in a way Paul commanded the Church not to do?

As you can see, I have a lot of opinions about this topic, but the main point of this passage is that Jesus is Lord of the Sabbath.  To that point I think that if He intended to revoke the Sabbath (as some argue), He would have said that plainly and His apostles through inspiration of the Holy Spirit would have written it down clearly.  We also would have to go against what Jesus said about not one jot or tittle of the Law passing away--"Heaven and earth will pass away, but My Word will never pass away," and we'd have to go against the example of every other time Jesus says "You have heard it said, but I say...."  In every one of those instances, He not only affirms the Law, but makes it a matter of the heart and not something simply external.  Not once did Jesus ever abolish a single commandment, and He had the right to as we saw today.  No, instead, He perfectly fulfilled all of the Law--including the Fourth Commandment.