Call the Sabbath a Delight

On a Sabbath, while he was going through the grainfields, his disciples plucked and ate some heads of grain, rubbing them in their hands. But some of the Pharisees said, “Why are you doing what is not lawful to do on the Sabbath?” And Jesus answered 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 took and ate the bread of the Presence, which is not lawful for any but the priests to eat, and also gave it to those with him?” And he said to them, “The Son of Man is lord of the Sabbath.” On another Sabbath, he entered the synagogue and was teaching, and a man was there whose right hand was withered. And the scribes and the Pharisees watched him, to see whether he would heal on the Sabbath, so that they might find a reason to accuse him. But he knew their thoughts, and he said to the man with the withered hand, “Come and stand here.” And he rose and stood there. And Jesus said to them, “I ask you, is it lawful on the Sabbath to do good or to do harm, to save life or to destroy it?” And after looking around at them all he said to him, “Stretch out your hand.” And he did so, and his hand was restored. But they were filled with fury and discussed with one another what they might do to Jesus (Luke 6:1–11).[1]         

Scripture tells us, in the second chapter of Genesis, that “on the seventh day God finished his work that he had done, and he rested on the seventh day from all his work that he had done. So God blessed the seventh day and made it holy, because on it God rested from all his work that he had done in creation” (Gen. 2:2-3). He who has no need to rest, rested from his work in creation. He who created every day of the week purposefully blessed the seventh thereby making it holy, set apart, from the other days, establishing the precedent of the sabbath and the principle of one full day of rest in seven. So important was this precedent and principle that it is given as the fourth of God’s Ten Commandments: 

Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy. Six days you shall labor, and do all your work, but the seventh day is a Sabbath to the LORD your God. On it you shall not do any work, you, or your son, or your daughter, your male servant, or your female servant, or your livestock, or the sojourner who is within your gates. For in six days the LORD made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them, and rested on the seventh day. Therefore the LORD blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy (Ex. 20:8-11);

Remembering points back to creation, keeping is the perpetual obedience of it. We who were created in God’s image, rest as our Creator rested.[2]

But we learn more about the principle of the Sabbath when the Fourth Commandment is restated in Deuteronomy, where the commandment begins, “Observe the Sabbath day, to keep it holy,” and concludes, “You shall remember that you were a slave in the land of Egypt, and the LORD your God brought you out from there with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm. Therefore the LORD your God commanded you to keep the Sabbath day (Deut. 5:12-15). Observing connotes worshipful obedience and remembering is directed to Israel’s freedom from Egyptian slavery. In this way, the Sabbath becomes a day of rest from work, pointing back to the precedent of God’s resting, and a day of worship, remembering God’s redeeming work for his people. In this way, the Sabbath was God’s blessing to man, a worshipful resting in God’s provision.

So important was the Sabbath commandment that God said, “Everyone who profanes [the Sabbath] shall be put to death. Whoever does any work on it, that soul shall be cut off from among his people. ... Whoever does any work on the Sabbath day shall be put to death. Therefore the people of Israel shall keep the Sabbath, observing the Sabbath throughout their generations, as a covenant forever” (Ex. 31:12-17). In this solemn sense, the Sabbath became an identifying characteristic of God’s covenant people: They were people who observed the Sabbath. Imagine the blessing and testimony this was. The surrounding pagan nations of ancient Israel looked at that little nation and saw a people who rested from their work, not occasionally but every seven days. Every seven days, they remembered God’s rest from his work of creation. Every seven days, they celebrated their redemption from slavery. I would imagine it sounded like a repetitive waste of time to Israel’s neighbors, as it may to our neighbors today, but God’s ways are not the world’s ways. God established and commanded the Sabbath, a repetitive, perpetual, covenantally-identifying blessing for his people.  

Resting from Work

Many are the blessings of God upon his creatures. Manifold are his blessings upon his people. God commands that his people work six days and rest one. This is both a blessing to the sluggard who lounges in his lethargy and a life-saving luxury for the workaholic. It is a blessing to creatures created to worship God yet tempted to worship everyone and everything but the One true God, to remember every seven days to remember our Creator and worship our Redeemer.

The problem is we are experts at perverting God’s blessings. Such has been the case with everyone since the Fall, such will be the case with everyone until the end of time, and such was the case with the Pharisees in Jesus’ day. Reading and studying the Scriptures, they understood the importance God places on remembering, observing, keeping the Sabbath. And so, intending to protect the Sabbath’s honor and the lives of the people, they constructed a 39-point rule book, defining what constituted work. It included sowing and reaping, typical work in an agricultural-based economy, but also (in case you wanted to know) “separating two threads, tying a knot, loosening a knot, sewing two stitches.” (Thankfully, one rabbi stepped in and determined that you would not be guilty of the work of untying a knot if you could untie a knot with one hand.)[3]

Understanding this, we may better understand the response of the Pharisees when they saw Jesus’ disciples plucking, shucking, and eating grain as they walked through the fields. Were they breaking God’s law? No. There is no law that prohibits what the disciples were doing. There is, however, a law in Deuteronomy that states, “If you go into your neighbor’s standing grain, you may pluck the ears with your hand” (Deut. 23:25a). But in the Pharisees’ rule book, plucking and shucking constituted work and therefore broke the Fourth Commandment, which is why they ask, “Why are you doing what is not lawful to do on the Sabbath?” (6:2).

It’s a simple enough question, but hidden within it is a problem: What is it?  Is it their zeal for keeping the Sabbath? No, it is their use of the word “law”? The only “law” broken was the one created by the Pharisees, not God’s law. But in their mind, there was no distinction.

Now, how would you expect Jesus to respond to their question? Would you expect him to begin to dissect their rule book point by point? Would you expect him to quote the specific laws from Scripture pertaining to keeping the Sabbath? How did Jesus respond? He gave them a case study from Scripture.

In 1 Samuel 20 and 21, we read of Saul’s attempted murder of David in the night and David’s flight to the city of Nob. Famished and in need of nourishment, David asks Ahimelech the priest to give him the bread of Presence the house of worship. According to God’s law for sanctified worship and priestly service, this bread was priests only and to be eaten in a holy place. When Ahimelech gave and David and his men ate the bread, they broke God’s ceremonial law. And yet, God permitted it for David’s preservation.

Why did Jesus use this example? Just as David and his men needed to eat, so Jesus and his disciples needed to eat. Just as David and his men broke the ceremonial law for their sustenance, so Jesus and his disciples could break the lesser law of the Pharisees to eat. In the Pharisees’ zeal to keep the Sabbath they were negating God’s intended mercy in it. Their legalism blinded them to the purpose of the law, to love God and love our neighbor. Or as Jesus said to them, “if you had known what this means, ‘I desire mercy, and not sacrifice,’ you would not have condemned the guiltless” (Matt. 12:7).

Focused on Christ

Jesus could have stopped with his example, but he didn’t. Instead, he confronted them with his identity and authority, saying, “The Son of Man is lord of the Sabbath.” Referring to himself in third-person, Jesus’ uses the messianic title “Son of Man,” taken from the prophecies of Daniel, to refer to himself. It is a title telling of his humanity but also his glory. Truly God and truly man, he is Jesus Christ the Lord and therefore “lord of the Sabbath.”

He who created the heavens and the earth. He who rested on the seventh day and established the Sabbath. He who redeemed his people out of slavery. He who gave them his law. He who was sent in the fullness of time, “born of woman, born under the law, to redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive adoption as sons” (Gal. 4:4), he is the Lord of the Sabbath. And as such, as Phil Ryken explains, “The law for [the Sabbath day] was given at his command; the worship of it returns to his honor; and the proper observance of it is his sovereign prerogative.”

Some have misinterpreted Jesus’ words, believing that Jesus abolished the Sabbath and essentially the Fourth Commandment with it. But as Jesus explained elsewhere, “Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them” (Matt. 5:17). In declaring himself to be the Lord of the Sabbath, he was not abolishing the Sabbath but upholding it. As J.C. Ryle explains, “The architect who repairs a building, and restores it to its proper use, is not the destroyer of it, but the preserver.”[4]

Furthermore, by declaring himself the Lord of the Sabbath, Jesus revealed the picture and greater purpose of it. The rest we receive from the Lord on the Sabbath is meant to point us to our eternal rest in Christ. Just as Israel was taught to remember their redemption from Egyptian slavery, the Sabbath is meant to remind us that we do not labor under the law to be unshackled from slavery to sin, but Christ has redeemed us to rest in his finished work upon the cross. And our rest as the redeemed points us toward our eternal rest in glory. As the writer of Hebrews explains, “So then, there remains a Sabbath rest for the people of God, for whoever has entered God’s rest has also rested from his works as God did from his” (Heb. 4:9-10).

Once you understand this, then you understand why Christians celebrate the Sabbath on Sunday instead of Saturday, because Sunday is the day that Jesus resurrected from the dead, conquering our enemies of sin and death. Every Sunday we celebrate the reality of an empty tomb, a risen Savior, and the eternal rest we have in him. While our sinful flesh would rather skip it all together or turn it into a legalistic burden, we who have been saved by the life, death, and resurrection of the Lord of the Sabbath, call the Sabbath a delight. Every Sunday, week after week, we rest from work and gather in worship. Every Sunday, week after week, we keep the Sabbath because the Lord of the Sabbath has kept it for us, forever.

Acting in Mercy

In keeping with this Sabbath theme, Luke couples an incident on another Sabbath day, when Jesus was teaching in the synagogue and in came a man with a deformed hand. Luke’s inference is that the man desired to be healed, which we expect, as did the scribes and Pharisees. But Luke tells us that they were not watching with anticipation but to “find a reason to accuse [Jesus].” The man’s need was of no concern to them. The keeping of their rules and regulations trumped necessity and mercy. And Jesus knew it.

Asking the man to come and stand by him, as if setting the stage for the Pharisees to clearly see, he asked them, “is it lawful on the Sabbath to do good or to do harm, to save life or to destroy it?” Clearly, Jesus was confronting their hard hearts, but in asking he was also teaching? Jesus was not only teaching that the Pharisees’ view of the Sabbath was wrong; he was revealing it to be immoral. “He has told you, O man, what is good,” the prophet Micah declared, “and what does the LORD require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?” (Mic. 6:8). The Pharisees knew this but chose to defer such justice, kindness, and humility to any other day but the Sabbath. Jesus didn’t but instead, looking straight in their eyes then said to the man, “Stretch out your hand.” And so, the man did, and he was healed, and the Pharisees hated it.

J.C. Ryle observes, “What excessive importance hypocrites attach to trifles.”[5] It is quite remarkable what the human heart can elevate, equal to God’s law. And we are all susceptible to it, because it often seems in accord with Scripture and seemingly pleasing to God. Such is the capacity of your heart to deceive you. What trifles have you elevated that leads you to critique, criticize, and not care for our neighbor? What do you justify in our attitudes and actions that keep you from seeing the need of those around you? Be careful what you justify in your heart, because you may find yourself opposing the gospel of Jesus Christ.

The Pharisees got the message. They clearly understood Jesus’ self-declared identity and authority as the “Son of Man and lord of the Sabbath.” But in their mind, it wasn’t divine revelation but heresy and blasphemy. They clearly understood that Jesus intended to disregard and disobey their rules and regulations, and it led them not to self-examination but “fury.” One commentator notes, “Ironically, in their fanatical hatred the Pharisees were really the ones who were breaking the Sabbath, because they were committing murder in their hearts. Rather than preserving life on the Sabbath, they were starting to look for a way to take it.”[6]

In contrast, let us remember that the Lord intends the Sabbath for our good, as Jesus said, “The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath” (Mark 2:27). It is a day set apart from all the others, for resting from work and worshiping the Lord but also, in the providence of God, for works of necessity and mercy. Let us then call the Sabbath a Delight because our delight is in the Lord of the Sabbath.                    

            [1] Unless referenced otherwise, all Scripture quotations are from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version (Wheaton: Crossway Bibles, 2001).

            [2] Gen. 1:27

            [3] Dale Ralph Davis, Luke: The Year of the Lord’s Favor (Fearn: Christian Focus Publications, 2021), 106.

            [4] J.C. Ryle, Expository Thoughts on Luke, Vol. 1 (Edinburgh: The Banner of Truth Trust, 2012), 162.

            [5] Ibid., 159.

            [6] Philip Graham Ryken, Luke, Vol. 1 (Phillipsburg: P&R Publishing, 2009), 251.