The Lord of Worship

In verse 2 their question seems to spring from an assumption that keeping Sabbath regulations was more important than the needs of people—in this case, hunger. Because they elevate law over people, they become hard toward people and indifferent toward needs. They do not understand Hosea 6:6, which says, “I desire faithful love and not sacrifice.” The Pharisees desire the opposite. They want sacrificial obedience to the law instead of loving mercy to fellow Israelites in need.

Here then is the second step in becoming a religious Pharisee: Make our religious rules more important than Jesus himself. They do this because they want Jesus to submit to their rules. They want Jesus under their law.

The Pharisees charge the Lord with breaking the law. The Lord’s first reply is simple: He has done no such thing (vv. 3-5).

In fact, the Lord calls on another section of the Scripture, the history of Israel’s greatest and most celebrated king, David. In 1 Samuel 21:1-6 David is not yet king. He is running from King Saul, who is trying to kill him because David is God’s chosen king to replace Saul. While on the run, David and his men grow hungry. There’s only one safe place they can go: the temple. In the temple there was always to be “the Bread of the Presence” (v. 6) kept before God as a memorial. The only people who could eat that bread at the end of the prescribed time were the priests. David and his men ate the bread with the priest’s blessing. Yet nowhere does the Bible rebuke or condemn David for doing so.

Jesus reads the Old Testament narrative as applicable for his day and situation. Maybe the Pharisees object, “But David did not eat the bread on the Sabbath. It was a different day of the week and an extraordinary circumstance.” When Matthew writes about this exchange between Jesus and the Pharisees, he adds an important detail. In Matthew 12:5-7 Jesus says,

Or haven’t you read in the law that on Sabbath days the priests in the temple violate the Sabbath and are innocent? I tell you that something greater than the temple is here. If you had known what this means, “I desire mercy and not sacrifice,” you would not have condemned the innocent. (Emphasis added.)

Have you ever wondered to yourself, If God forbids work on the Sabbath, how does he regard the priests who work on the Sabbath? The priests are the holy representatives of God before the people. Each Sabbath is full of work for them, and yet God does not regard it as sin. This is the Lord’s point. In Matthew’s account the Lord adds, “I tell you that something greater than the temple is here” (Luke 6:5). In Luke’s account that comment stands right next to Jesus saying, “The Son of Man is Lord of the Sabbath” (Matt 12:8).

What they do not yet see as they look to trap Jesus is that Jesus is greater than their law. He is not meant to submit to their law. He is Lord over the true law of God.

Luke 6:5 says, “The Son of Man is Lord of the Sabbath.” As Lord of the Sabbath, he rules the Sabbath. He can only rule the Sabbath if, in fact, he owns it. He can only own it if he is the one who made it and gave it. The seventh day—like all days—is put beneath the Lord’s feet. Verse 5 is a powerful statement from Jesus’s own mouth that he is God. The Son of Man is Lord of the Sabbath, not servant to it, and he is guiltless before it.

When the scribes and Pharisees get legalistic about the Sabbath, they enslave men to the Sabbath as if the Sabbath were the greatest thing. But here before them is one greater than the temple, as Matthew tells us, and greater than the Sabbath. He is the Great Lawgiver who interprets the meaning of the law without any error.

Mark records this scene in his Gospel, too. Mark 2:27 adds one further thing. The Lord Jesus says there, “The Sabbath was made for man and not man for the Sabbath.”

The Pharisees serve the law, but the law was meant to serve them. The law was intended to protect them from overwork and the idolatry of work. It was to protect them from the routine that regularly forgets God by reminding them for a full day at the least that God is their God and they are his people. God gave the Sabbath to refresh the souls and bodies of people by having them meet with the Lord. How kind of God to dedicate an entire day for us to do nothing but know him, meet with him, enjoy him, and find ourselves refreshed by him. This is why good worship never exhausts but fills, energizing and making ready.

This is why neglecting the Lord’s Day brings such self-harm. We harm ourselves when we busy ourselves with the world’s pursuits or the work we bring home. This may not be wrong in itself, but it’s not the best thing. The best thing is what Mary discovered sitting at the Lord’s feet, hearing his voice, enjoying the needful thing, being refreshed by his presence (Luke 10:39).

If we’re going to worship in a manner that pleases God, we must serve the Son. When we serve the Son we discover that the law was made for us, to bless us not to burden us. That’s the case with all of God’s Word, but it’s especially the case with the law about keeping the Sabbath.

The Sabbath is a shrine in time. It’s not a holy place but a holy period. It’s time dedicate d to rest and refreshment with the Lord. God made the Sabbath so that we would have a regular day for meeting with him and having our souls revived. The Sabbath was a gift to Israel, just as the Lord’s Day (Sunday) is a gift to the church.

Jesus, the Lawgiver, has not come to demand that we obey the law. This is what makes Pharisaical religion so odious to God. Pharisees demand we keep the law when even the Lawgiver does not demand that for righteousness. We have already failed at keeping the law. The law requires that we die for that failure. But Jesus has come to perfectly fulfill the law (Matt 5:17) and to pay the penalty the law requires. Every demand that God places on us, Jesus Christ has fulfilled—even the keeping of the Sabbath. That is why Jesus lives a perfect life in obedience to God: to offer to God the righteousness we do not have. And that is why Jesus voluntarily and lovingly sacrifices himself on the cross: to pay the penalty of death and to suffer God’s condemnation in our place. Everyone who believes in this Jesus stops trying to work their way to God and, turning from any hopes of self-righteousness, they enter into the true rest, an unending Sabbath, based on faith.

That is why the writer of Hebrews tells us the real Sabbath is, first, ceasing from working to earn righteousness with God and, second, by faith in Christ entering the rest that Jesus gives (Heb 4). The Sabbath, like all the law, prophesies about the coming of Christ and a coming rest. That rest is not merely the seventh day, but eternity. We who believe have rested from our war with sin and have entered the rest Christ purchased by his blood. In that rest we flourish without effort. This is the true Sabbath, and all who believe in Christ live in it.

Should we serve the law or serve the Son? Oh, beloved, serve the Son and find rest for your souls.

Luke 6:6-11

Verses 6-11 provide us with another encounter between Jesus and the Pharisees “on another Sabbath” (v. 6). Jesus was teaching in the synagogue, and there’s a man there “whose right hand has shriveled” (v. 6). The scribes and Pharisees are up to their old tricks. They “were watching [Jesus] closely, to see if he would heal on the Sabbath, so that they could find a charge against him” (v. 7).

Can I say a word to any skeptics among us? As a skeptic, you are doubtful about Jesus and the claims of Christianity. The scribes and Pharisees represent your position. I think God has kindly included them in the Gospel narratives so that you can learn from their mistake. They watched Jesus, not to find evidence that would lead them to Jesus, but to find something to accuse him with. They are in the synagogue on the day of worship hearing the word of God taught, literally looking for a miracle—a miracle they know he can do and have seen before—not so they can believe in him, but so they can reject him. In the social sciences we call this “confirmation bias.” Confirmation bias happens when a person takes whatever evidence that is contrary to their position and interprets it in a way that confirms their position. When we operate with a confirmation bias, we do not really adjust our thinking with the new evidence presented. We rearrange the evidence to leave our bias undisturbed. That is not honest thinking.

If you are skeptical of Jesus, beware this kind of confirmation bias. It will blind you just as it did the Pharisees and scribes. Do not repeat the Pharisees’ mistake. See the evidence. Let it speak for itself. Then follow the evidence where it leads. Pay particular attention when the evidence feels most threatening or inconvenient to you. That is where your bias will be lurking.

The Lord has a wonderful sense of the dramatic. He calls the man to himself in front of them all and immediately heals the man’s hand (v. 8). Our Lord knows what they think, so he’s setting up a confrontation—not so much between himself and them but between what they are thinking and what they know is right. Our Lord publicly shames them by asking the powerful question of verse 9—“I ask you: Is it lawful to do good on the Sabbath or to do evil, to save life or to destroy it?”

It’s like asking, Why would healing on the Sabbath be a problem? Healing is good. It relieves suffering. It restores the body. All of us would want to be healed were we sick. So Jesus effectively asks, “What is it about your understanding of the Sabbath, a holy day, that prevents people from doing holy and good things to bless others?”

The scribes and Pharisees seem to assume their religious rules for the Sabbath are more important than the need of the people worshiping on the Sabbath. That’s the third step in becoming a religious Pharisee. Their rules become more important than life itself.

Our Lord’s question adjusts their thinking and our thinking, doesn’t it? Consider how Jesus thinks in verse 9. The question assumes (1) doing harm to anyone is not lawful; (2) destroying life is not lawful; and (3) it is always the right time to do good and save life. These simple statements seem obvious, don’t they? But our religious rules and our biases can blind us to the obvious.

We might put it this way: To fail to do good or save life when you can is, in fact, to do harm and destroy life. There’s no neutrality in the worship that Jesus teaches and models for us. We cannot pretend to worship Jesus if we refuse to help those in need

So, as Christians who follow the Lord, we cannot be silent about the plight of the unborn because we are on the way to worship—as if there exists a way to worship that calls a time out on saving life. As Christians, we cannot avoid developing a Christian view of Black Lives Matter because black lives do matter. We cannot excuse ourselves from thinking this through because “it’s time to preach the gospel”—as if the gospel has nothing to say about doing good and saving life. We cannot pit eternality against temporality. Sometimes you have to save a physical life in order to have an opportunity to save a soul.

We don’t have to sign off on everything that comes under the banner of “Black Lives Matter” any more than we have to sign off on everything that comes under the banner of “the pro-life movement.” We do not endorse the shooting of abortion clinic doctors. We intend to save lives not take them. We do not endorse riots in the cause of protecting black lives. We are interested in the saving of life as a Christian obligation and responsibility as we follow our Lord and proclaim his gospel. There is no contradiction in these things.

The religious Pharisee in us would tempt us to think we cannot both proclaim the message of eternal life and defend the sanctity of all human life. We can do both things in the course of a sermon. So we must strive to do both things in the course of our daily lives.

Our worship must propel us to do good and to save lives. And it is always the right time to do what is right. That’s our Savior’s example here.

Becoming Pharisees is easy. All we need to do is

We might be surprised at how easily our hearts slide in this direction. But worship that pleases the Lord has a very different character. God-pleasing worship

Christ Jesus has come to save sinners so that we might truly worship. He is the Lord of worship and tells us what pleases him.