Do you ever listen here in church or read your Bible on your own and run across names of people or groups and you have no idea who they are or maybe only a little idea? For example, if I told you I was going to right now walk the aisle and ask a few people to take the microphone and tell us all who the Herodians were, would you suddenly need to use the bathroom…or take a kid out for a minute…or crawl under the pew? Would you feel a little better if you knew that I’d be asking about the Pharisees? Some of you, maybe, but many of us would not be too confident about them either.
Since we run into the Pharisees and Herodians this morning, let me give you a quick sketch of each of those groups. The Pharisees were pretty much lay people, middleclass Jews who were very, very religious…and very, very admired by the common people because of the way they lived for God…and very, very feared by the upper classes because of their influence over the Jewish people. The real problem with them was their legalism. The quickest way to explain that is that they felt that they earned God’s love and acceptance and even salvation by obeying all the Old Testament Law PLUS all of their extra laws and traditions they layered on top of God’s expectations. And they looked down on people who didn’t try to follow all of that.
It’s pretty rare that we talk about The Herodians. That’s because they are only mentioned in this account and a time when they questioned Jesus about paying taxes to Caesar. They were Jewish people who sided with the Herod family, from which several rulers of Israel came (always local rulers under the umbrella of Roman rule) At Jesus’ time, the Herodians saw Herod Antipas as one who might give them more control over their country by collaborating with the Romans. So, they were a political group looking for a political Messiah for Israel.
The Pharisees and the Herodians were not aligned politically–or probably spiritually and they looked for two different kinds of savior for God’s people. So how did we get to where we are today where they are colluding to kill Jesus? A couple of Sabbath Day Lessons will help us understand that and we’ll…
1. Learn How to View the Sabbath Law of God (2:23-27)
2. Learn How Jesus is the Lord of the Sabbath (2:28, 3:1-6)
1. Learn How to View the Sabbath Law of God (2:23-27)
It always strikes me as quite odd when Christians don’t prioritize coming to God’s house for worship each week. In some cases, people even claim to be Christians but never go to church. There’s a long list of reasons I think that is weird, but a big one is that Jesus himself always went. He always celebrated the Sabbath, going to synagogue, being with God’s people, hearing the Word. If Jesus did that and tells us to, it’s hard to understand us not doing it! Today we hear about two Sabbath days on which Jesus taught some lessons, not in the way we have teaching and preaching in church, but as he reacted in a couple situations to people who had weird ideas about the day of worship, which for them was called the Sabbath, which means “rest. ”
First, we find Jesus and his disciples on a Sabbath day walk. Maybe they were on their way to church or leaving, since there were others there—the Pharisees, who would absolutely not miss going on the Sabbath. They saw the disciples doing something they considered forbidden to do on the Sabbath! They were plucking heads of grain off the stalks and eating them as they walked along. They were simply eating, not harvesting the field, which would have been working on the day of rest. Yet the Pharisees accused them of that because of the layers of their own laws they piled on top of God’s actual commands for a day of rest.
What a teachable moment this presented for Jesus! To make his point, he recalls a story they knew well. It always makes me smile to hear Jesus say, “Have you never read…” Of course they had! They were experts in the Scriptures! But he’s making them rethink it so that they can apply it to what was happening right in front of them AND to then see him for who he was. “Have you never read what David did when he was in need and hungry (he and his companions)? He entered the house of God in the time of Abiathar the high priest and ate the Bread of the Presence, which is not lawful for anyone to eat, except for the priests. He also gave some to his companions.”
See, they had missed the principle taught by God when he did not condemn either the high priest or David. The principle is that human need is of higher consideration to God than just going through religious rituals. Jesus explained that by saying, “The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath.”
If it was the other way around that man was made for the Sabbath, then the Sabbath would not be something that brought blessing. It would be only a rule to be obeyed, which could never be done perfectly and so would lead to death. That’s the danger the Pharisees were in. It would be like us thinking that we are saved by God because we go to church on Sunday, every Sunday, and if we’re really good and helping with something, we go to both services and Bible class in between! That’s got to be worth something! It sure is better than those skippers who do something else on Sunday morning or those who would rather sit at home in their jammies, drinking coffee in their recliners and watching church on TV rather than come to the Lord’s house and be with God’s people. You hear the Pharisee in your voice if you say that, right?
We’re not earning anything because we’re here. We’re here because God has gifted us this opportunity every week so that he can bless us with a little break from the week’s work and routine and concerns. He blesses us here with his Word and the sacraments and with each other. It’s a restful couple of hours that we get to enjoy. If we’re looking at it differently, we’ve got a problem.
Then we’re treating church like something we have to do rather than something we want to do because God blesses us here. God did not create us so that we could go to church. He created a church day to serve as a blessing for us to enjoy.
2. Learn How Jesus is the Lord of the Sabbath (2:28, 3:1-6)
That encounter with these very religious men ended with Jesus making an incredibly bold statement: “the Son of Man is the Lord even of the Sabbath.” Jesus taught them a lesson not just about how to view Sabbath practices but about how the Sabbath connected to him!
The Sabbath and all the Old Testament laws were put in place to point to Jesus, the “Son of Man ” That was the messianic title or name that Jesus always used for himself. HE was the Lord of the Sabbath, the one who created the Sabbath day AND the one who will bring the ultimate Sabbath rest an eternity with God where his people will rest from the fight against sin and the fight to hold onto faith while in this world. The Lord of the Sabbath created the little rests we get here week by week to remind us and make us think about the eternal rest that comes through faith in him as our Savior.
The next confrontation took place at God’s house, possibly on the following Sabbath day. The Pharisees are defiantly holding their position on the Sabbath law and watching Jesus to see if they would find him guilty of violating God’s Sabbath law by healing a man. Jesus knows what’s going on, so, what does he do? He calls the man into the middle of everyone so that he can teach another lesson. He embraced the opportunity to show himself as the Messiah and to teach that he was the Lord of the Sabbath and that love is the fulfillment of the law.
Doing good out of love for someone on the Sabbath was not breaking God’s law. To make the point, he asks a question of the silent judges around him. “Is it lawful on the Sabbath day to do good or to do evil, to save life or to kill?” Silence. Not a word. But words weren’t necessary. In his divine view were hardened hearts that refused to recognize him as the Lord. And it made him angry.
But instead of doing something rash or retaliatory and sinning in anger, he grieved over them. His heart was not hard—just the opposite, it was breaking for them. Then he did what no one but God could do. With love for the man and love for those watching, he healed the man’s hand, helping him and hoping that the rest would look to him as Lord.
Instead, like bullies who have finally been stood up to and put in their place, the Pharisees angrily stomped off. But they didn’t just go away, they went away with purpose. And who did they go to? The Herodians. A group they shared no interests with except for this: they wanted Jesus gone.
He was a threat to one because he might take away their power in the religious community and following him would mean taking their way of living for God and turning it entirely upside down. He was a threat to the other because if people followed him as the Messiah of the Jewish people, they would never get the people to rally behind a Herod-Roman pairing to improve their country. If Jesus was anti-Moses AND antiRoman, he needed to die.
Our world is full of Pharisees and Herodians, isn’t it? How many people would love to see Jesus out of the way?
Stubbornly insist on what they want the Bible to say instead of what it actually says.
Raise political concerns and efforts to a higher level than religious interests and efforts.
But is it possible that your sinful nature does similar things? By nature, we don’t want to see Jesus as Lord either. There may be teachings in the Bible that we prefer our own spin on. That kind of thing still angers Jesus. Are we more interested in…or informed about or zealous for political things than we are about talking with people about Jesus’ love for a sinful world. Do I have to tell you that this angers him?
Do I feel threatened by Jesus because following him will change my way of life, take power and control away from me, force me to admit that I’m wrong? Instead of listening and learning and seeing the evidence that he is truly God and following him, it’s easier to walk away from him.
Don’t let those thoughts develop in your heart. The danger is real that our hearts can eventually become entirely hardened against Jesus and, essentially, he becomes dead to us instead of being our living Lord.
What causes us to think all of this is simply the matter of celebrating the Sabbath. The Pharisees had taken the simple, beautiful blessing of being able to rest and worship God and complicated it, making it something that focused on themselves…and what they could do and couldn’t do and whether it would bring judgment or bring them closer to God. This was not restful; it was pressure. Pressure to perform. Earning God’s affection, earning heaven that’s what was on the line. Does that sound restful?
No, it doesn’t. Jesus did not plan the Sabbath day for that. He did not plan the way of salvation to be like that.
The day of worship is nothing but a blessing, a time for rest and worship and even doing good.
Salvation is a gift to us earned by Jesus, the Lord of the Sabbath not something to be worked for and earned.
It’s that simple. The focus of our Sundays and worship is Jesus and what he did to save us. May each Sunday, our Sabbath day, be a day of spiritual rest in the Lord that reminds you of the eternal rest you will eventually have with your Savior. Amen.
Now the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. Amen.