Jesus Confronts those Who Don’t Think They Need Help
One reason Jesus is so offensive to many people is because his message says that we need help, that we need him to do something that we can’t do. None of us like admitting that we need help. But Jesus’ gospel says that we need to turn away from ourselves and trust in him in order to be saved (Mk. 1:15). We don’t like to be told that we can’t do something, that we need help, or that our best efforts at something are actually worthless. But this is what Jesus came to tell us. And this is why many reject him and hate him and ignore him and scoff at him.
When Jesus began his earthly ministry, he took direct aim at a group of people who thought they could help themselves into God’s favor, people who thought that they could make themselves clean before God. Jesus confronted the religious leaders, the scribes and Pharisees, with the truth that their goodness wasn’t good enough for God. This didn’t go over very well because these men were God’s spokesmen, the ones who told everyone else what God wanted. Jesus shows up and essentially tells them that they’re wrong and that God isn’t happy with them.
In the section of Mark’s Gospel that we’ve been studying, we’ve seen the tension between them escalate (1:40-3:6). In the text we’ll study today, Jesus goes after the centerpiece of their tradition, the Sabbath day, telling them that their understanding and practice of it is wrong. Then he tells them that he has authority to say these things because he’s God. This kind of talk will get a man crucified. Jesus, knowing the cost, spoke the truth and confronted those who thought they didn’t need help. In so doing, he revealed the tender mercies and free grace of God.
The Sabbath is for Man
In 2:23-28, Jesus rebukes the Pharisees for making the Sabbath a burden instead of a blessing. Roads were scarce in the ancient world. Pathways crisscrossed fields and pastures. It wasn’t unusual at all to be walking through someone’s grain field. The Old Testament actually made provision for people who journeyed through fields, “If you go into your neighbor’s standing grain, you may pluck the ears with your hand, but you shall not put a sickle to your neighbor’s standing grain” (Deut. 23:25). You could grab a snack from your neighbor’s field, but you couldn’t harvest his field.
Jesus’ disciples were doing what God’s Law allowed them to do. But Verse 24 says that the Pharisees had a big problem with this. To understand their complaint, we need to understand how they viewed the Sabbath, the fourth of the Ten Commandments (Ex. 20:8-11). The Sabbath was intended to be a day of worship and rest for God’s people. It was to be a holy day, a “holiday.” The word “Sabbath” means “to rest or cease.” On the seventh day of each week (Saturday), the Israelites were to refrain from working in order to rest and honor the Lord. This law, by the way, made Israel unique in the Ancient Middle East. All the pagan nations worked every day. Even today, countries without a Judeo-Christian heritage work every day. Sunday isn’t seen as a day off but as a work day. Not taking a day off is more pagan than Christian.
In the fifteen hundred years between Moses and Jesus, the Sabbath law accumulated additional rabbinic rules and regulations. The Jewish Rabbis wrote down interpretations and additional teachings in the Talmud. In it, there are twenty-four chapters on Sabbath regulations, rules upon rules of what you could and couldn’t do on the Sabbath. For example, on the Sabbath you couldn’t light a candle, buy or sell anything, take a bath since water might spill onto the floor and that would count as washing it. No furniture could be moved inside the house since it might create ruts in the dirt floor and that would count as plowing. Sick people were only allowed enough treatment to keep them alive. Only life-threatening injuries were treated. Women weren’t allowed to look into a mirror since they might be tempted to pull out gray hairs they found. You couldn’t travel more than 1,999 steps (approx. 3,000 feet) from your home. To get around this, people would put food at the 3,000 foot mark so that it could be considered an extension of their home.
None of these rules are found in Scripture. For centuries, the rabbis tried to guard the Sabbath by adding all these prohibitions. But by doing so they suffocated the people, giving them an impossible burden to carry. No one could do all this. The Sabbath became like a stage for the Pharisees to show off their righteousness instead of a day for people to find rest.
Ironically, in their self-righteous zeal to accuse Jesus, the Pharisees probably walked more than 3,000 feet from their homes as they followed Jesus through the grain fields. Pharisaical hearts love to focus on apparent sins of others while ignoring their own. The key point here is that Jesus and his disciples hadn’t broken any law. They only broke the man-made rules of rabbis.
Jesus Responds with the Bible
How does Jesus respond (vv. 25-26)? Jesus responds to their complaint by pointing them to Scripture. He basically says, “Have you never read the Bible?” This was an insult to the Bible teachers of the day. Jesus reminds them of an incident in King David’s life found in 1 Samuel 21. David was a fugitive on the run from Saul. He and his “band of brothers” were hungry so David took them to the only place he knew would have food. Inside the tabernacle, there were twelve loaves of bread on a golden table in the Holy Place. They were replaced every Sabbath. Only the priests could eat the bread once it was removed. But the priest made an exception for David and his men. He allowed a ceremonial law to be violated in order to help people in need. David took the bread from God’s presence and administered it to his hungry followers. Bread from God’s presence kept God’s people alive.
In verses 27-28, Jesus interprets this passage for the Pharisees. They knew the story, but they didn’t know what it meant. Jesus says that the Sabbath is a gift from God, “The Sabbath was made for man.” The rabbis had taken the gift and made it a burden. The work it took to keep all the man-made regulations undermined the point of the Sabbath. God left people free on the Sabbath. The rabbis put them in chains. The absurd legalism of the rabbis left people tired and in bondage, when God’s law was meant to give people rest and blessing.
Modern Day Pharisees
This kind of thing still exists in our hearts and minds and churches. People have always had a tendency to add rules on top of God’s laws. Some examples are the insistence of some that drinking alcohol is wrong. The Bible never says that. It does say drunkenness is wrong, and it does say that we shouldn’t do anything that would make another Christian stumble, but it never says drinking is wrong.
In previous generations, there were widespread prohibitions of dancing and card games and what ladies could wear to church. These things aren’t wrong in themselves. But to bind someone’s conscience where the word of God doesn’t bind their conscience is legalism, or adding to the law of God. I’ve been reading a book to Elisha called That Little Voice In Your Head: Learning About Your Conscience, by Andy Naselli. He says, “There’s a difference between family rules and Bible rules.” Some families require shoes to be taken off at the door, some don’t. That’s a family rule that doesn’t apply to all people, whereas the Bible’s commands do apply to all people.
Naselli did a book with J. D. Crowley on the same topic, but for adults, called Conscience: What It Is, How to Train It, and Loving Those Who Differ. They discuss several examples of how we might bind someone’s conscience when God doesn’t. For example, some say that tattoos are always wrong because of Leviticus 19:28. But Naselli and Crowley remind us that Christians are no longer under the Mosaic law-covenant and that tattoos in the Ancient Near East were used much differently than they are today. Therefore, it’s not inherently sinful to have tattoos.
The examples could be multiplied. What about secular music, Harry Potter, homeopathic medicine vs. antibiotics, watching particular movies or TV shows, public school vs. private school vs. homeschool, body piercings, or the Santa Clause myth? The Bible doesn’t tell us exactly what to do about all these specific issues. What we must do, according to Naselli, is “calibrate (adjust, regulate, fine-tune) our conscience by educating our conscience with truth.”
In other words, we must train our conscience with the Word of God so that when we’re thinking through complex issues that aren’t clearly addressed in the Word of God, we’ll be thinking in biblical categories and applying biblical principles. And we’ll be encouraged to love those who come to different conclusions. The point is that, if we want to avoid doing what the Pharisees were doing to Jesus, we must be careful not to bind anyone’s conscience, including our own, with anything but the Word of God.
The Lord of the Sabbath
The reason why Jesus could so boldly refute the practices of the rabbis was because of who he was (v. 28). This is a bombshell statement, much like 2:10. Jesus once again says that he’s the “Son of Man,” the divine ruler of all things pictured in Daniel 7:13-14.
What does it mean for Jesus to say that he’s “the Lord of the Sabbath”? He’s saying that he made the Sabbath and that he’s in charge of it. He’s claiming to be the Creator, to be God. This is blasphemy to the Pharisees, which leads them to pursue the death penalty (3:6). The Pharisees thought that the Sabbath belonged to them. They’d been tweaking it and working out its rules for centuries. It was the center of their self-righteous show. But Jesus says that the Sabbath belongs to him because he made it. Because Jesus is God, he gets to decide how the Sabbath works.
In this one encounter, Jesus defied their extrabiblical rules and claimed to be the God of the Bible. He says, “Your rules are wrong because I’m the one who makes the rules. Your rules enslave my people when I came to free my people. Your rules are meant to glorify your performance, whereas my rules are meant to glorify my name. Leave my disciples alone – they’re not doing anything wrong. I’m the Judge of the universe and I decide what’s best for my people, not you.”
Jesus Has More Mercy than the Pharisees
Jesus didn’t stop there. He provoked them even more the next week in church (3:1-6). Jesus declared his authority in 2:28. He displays it here. Like vultures, the Pharisees were circling above Jesus, waiting to swoop in and devour him. They wanted to see if he would break their man-made laws again.
A “withered hand” wasn’t a life-threatening injury, so the Pharisees would’ve told him, “Jesus can fix your hand but you’ll have to wait till tomorrow.” But Jesus saw no reason why he should wait to show compassion to this man. So he calls him forward and makes him Exhibit A in his public rebuke of the Pharisees.
In verse 4, Jesus asks them whether their law allows for doing good on the Sabbath. This is a rhetorical question. Of course it’s ok to do good on the Sabbath. He’s saying that we should do good seven days a week, not six. A doctor or nurse should treat sick people seven days a week. Farmers should take care of their animals seven days a week. Parents should parent their children seven days a week. Church members should love and serve one another seven days a week. Doing good doesn’t get a day off.
Healing and Killing On the Sabbath
The irony here is amazing. Jesus probably knows what these guys are thinking. He knows that they’re thinking about killing him. Jesus wanted to heal on the Sabbath. The Pharisees wanted to kill on the Sabbath. Is there a worse way to violate the Sabbath than to plot how to kill the Lord of the Sabbath?
Their hypocrisy provoked anger in Jesus (v. 5). The word here for “anger” is the word for “fury.” Jesus was about to lose it on these guys who thought that their religious traditions were more important than helping someone who was suffering. But his fury was mixed with pain. Their hard hearts broke his heart. Jesus was furious with them and loved them at the same time. He had compassion for them even though they had no compassion for anyone.
How do you see self-righteous people? Like Jesus, we should see self-righteous people with loving hearts. We should hate their lack of love but have no lack of love for them. This is how Jesus has seen us. He’s upset by all our attempts to out-perform our friends and make ourselves look better than we actually are. He’s grieved by our consuming concern for our image and indifference for those who’re suffering. Our self-righteousness makes Jesus angry, but his anger is mixed with grief because he loves us and wants us to walk in the freedom and joy of his grace and not the bondage of being consumed with self.
Sin Grieves God, But His Patience Eventually Runs Out
God is grieved by sin wherever he sees it. Before he flooded the earth, the Bible says that “the Lord was sorry that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him to his heart” (Gen. 6:3). The fact that the flood still happened after this tells us that there’s a point when God’s compassion and mercy and patience runs out and his anger erupts. This is why Paul warns us to not grieve the Holy Spirit (Eph. 4:30). God’s heart hurts over sin. But his goodness and holiness demands that sin must be dealt with.
In his grace, God has given us his Word to help our consciences understand that we’ve rebelled against the God who made us. The Word of God shows us how hard our hearts are, how stiff our necks are. We put shields up so that we don’t have to hear the word of God because we know it pierces our hearts and exposes our sin. Do you shield your ears from hearing the word of God? Do you prevent it from piercing your heart by not coming to church or not reading the Bible? Instead of listening to Jesus’ teaching, the Pharisees wanted to shut him up. Please don’t be like them and harden your heart when you hear the word of God.
When we read stories like the ones we’ve studied this morning, we must be careful to not say, “Oh, those Pharisees sure were bad guys!” If we do that, we become just like them. When we’re quick to condemn the sins of others and yet blind to our own, we become like the people who hung Jesus on a cross.
We should instead go to God and say, “Please, Lord, don’t be angry with me. Help me not to give you reason to be furious with me. Don’t let me grieve you because my heart is hardened. Tell me what you want from me. Give me ears to hear and faith to embrace everything that you say to me.”