So let us open our Bibles to the Gospel of Luke. Gospel according to Luke chapter 6. We're going to look into the first 11 verses, well the first 12 verses actually of this chapter this morning. Luke 6, 1, Now it happened that he was passing through some grain fields on a Sabbath, and his disciples were picking the heads of grain, rubbing them in their hands, and eating the grain. But some of the Pharisees said, Why do you do what is not lawful on the Sabbath? Jesus answering said, Have you not even 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 consecrated bread, which is not lawful for any to eat except the priests alone, and gave it to his companions. And he was saying to them, The Son of Man is Lord of the Sabbath. On another Sabbath he entered the synagogue and was teaching. There was a man there whose right hand was withered. Scribes and the Pharisees were watching him closely to see if he healed on the Sabbath so they might find reason to accuse him. But he knew what they were thinking. He knew what they were thinking. And he said to the man with the withered hand, Get up and come forward. And he got up and came forward. And actually the King James more correctly states he told him to stand up in the middle of the assembly. Jesus said to them, I ask you, is it lawful to do good or to do harm on the Sabbath, to save a life or to destroy it? After looking around at them all, he said to him, Stretch out your hands. And he did so, and his hand was restored whole. But they themselves were filled with rage and discussed together what they might do to Jesus. It was at this time that he went off to the mountain to pray. And he spent the whole night in prayer to God. Father, we thank You that You have given us Your holy, inerrant, infallible, inspired Word to teach us, to convict us, to rebuke us, to correct us. And Lord, we know this Word is profitable. unto salvation. And so Lord, we pray that by Your Spirit, You will speak this word to us this morning. And that we will receive it in our minds and in our hearts, in Christ's name. So this morning we come to chapter 6 of the gospel according to Luke. Because of his preaching and healing ministry in Galilee, Jesus had become pretty famous. Pretty well known. And we recall last Lord's Day, or two Lord's Days ago, in chapter 5, Luke began to relate Jesus' encounters with His enemies-to-be, the Pharisees and the scribes. These are men who would oppose Him during His entire time in this fallen world. And eventually they would obtain a death warrant against Him. Pharisees were a sect of self-righteous men, religious men. They separated themselves from all who they deemed unclean, according to the law. And the scribes, we recall, were experts in the law itself, the authorities of the law, the teachers of the law. They were both groups, strict legalists. They religiously observed all the ceremonies of the law and the hundreds of rules that had been added by the rabbis over the years. Now while they're doing that, Luke has demonstrated that Jesus is the eternal Son of God in human flesh. And he's shown that Jesus exercised authority while he was on the earth over sickness and disease, over demons, over the natural world. And he has shown that Jesus has authority on the earth to forgive sins. That one's more important than all the other ones. Pharisees and their scribes were more concerned not with the forgiveness of sins or even the healing of diseases, but with the legal and ceremonial matters of the law. They weren't concerned really with the spiritual state of their brethren or with their physical condition in many cases. They were more concerned with this rigid compliance with rules and regulations than they were with love and compassion for neighbors and for their brethren even. Now we've seen Jesus was ushering in a whole new order of things. Judaism had been around now for 1,500 years almost. But Jesus had brought something new. Salvation by grace. And it didn't fit into the old Judaism. Didn't fit into the old system. Sacrifices were soon to be rendered obsolete by His offering of Himself on the cross. And last Lord's Day, Jesus showed that that was true for fasting as it was practiced by the Pharisees. Now fasting is still certainly a permitted and encouraged practice today. But the Pharisees did it as a legalistic matter. And they did it in a prideful way. In our passage this morning, Jesus is going to teach regarding the true meaning and purpose of the Sabbath, the Lord's Day. Look at the first couple of verses here. It happened. They're passing through some grain fields, he and his disciples. It's the Sabbath. His disciples are picking the heads of grain. They're rubbing them in their hands, separating the husks from the grain or the ear. It could be corn as some translate this. And they're eating this grain or this corn. And the Pharisees say, why do you do what is not lawful on the Sabbath? Picking the grain, rubbing it, and eating it. Now, the question is, was it unlawful for disciples to be picking these heads of grain and rubbing them in their hands and eating them on the Sabbath? Well, where should we look to find out whether that's unlawful or not? Well, the Word of God, of course. What does the Word of God say? Well, this is why we have such a long Scripture sheet this morning. The Sabbath. It's a word that means rest, cessation from activities, from regular activities. And it is a creation ordinance. It was first set forth in Genesis chapter 2. That's the first place we find Sabbath or rest or cessation from activities. Sabbath is just a name that's applied to this idea of rest. Genesis 2, 1, the heavens and the earth were completed and all their hosts. By the seventh day God completed all the work which He had done, and He rested on the seventh day from all His work He had done. Then God blessed the seventh day and sanctified it, because in it He rested from all His work which God had created and made. He ceased from that work. He didn't need to go to sleep. Brethren, we might fail to get a proper sense of what God was doing that first week until and unless we consider this question. Did God really need six days to create the universe and all things in it? Did He need six days? Anybody think He needed six days? No. He could have spoken all things into existence in an instant. But He took six days. Why? Why did He place the earth in a constant rotation of 24 hours? Why did He do that? Why did He set the earth in the sky revolving around the sun every 365 days? We didn't do that. He did that. Why did He place the moon so that it completes a cycle around the earth every 29 and a half days? And did you ever think about this? Why are there seven days in a week? Why not eight? Why not twenty? Why do we have weeks at all? Do we really need to have weeks? Couldn't we just have months and years? Where did this seven-day week come from? It came from God. God gave us a seven-day week. All of this comes from Genesis 1 and 2. God, by His placement of the earth and its moon and the sun, established a 365-day year, a 29-and-a-half-day month, and a 24-hour day, and a seven-day week. He did all that. Think about that for just a moment. Why'd He do that? Why did God do that? Did He need to establish that calendar so He could keep track of things? Obviously not. He established that calendar. He placed those bodies in the sky as He did for us, for mankind. He gave us a way to order our lives by the earth, the moon, and the sun. And not only did He give us that seven-day week, He gave us a six-day work week. I mean, we're still using this. Okay, it's gotten reduced to five. Some places four. But He gave us a six-day work week. And He instituted for us a day of cessation from our activities of the other six days. He did that. This wasn't some idea of men. This is what He did in Genesis chapter 2. He gave us a day of rest. Rest meaning, again, cessation from our normal activities. A day for a holy convocation we'll see in a moment. He blessed the seventh day and set it apart for all mankind before He gave the law on Mount Sinai. So the fourth commandment speaks of the Sabbath, commands the Sabbath. But the Sabbath rest was in effect for thousands of years before God gave the law on Mount Sinai. after the deliverance of the sons of Jacob from bondage in Egypt. But before giving the law, God would provide daily food in the wilderness, manna from heaven for the sons of Jacob. And when he did this, he applied the Sabbath rule from Genesis 2 to their gathering of the manna. Look at Exodus 16, 22. On the sixth day, they gathered twice as much bread, two omers for each one, When all the leaders of the congregation came and told Moses, he said, this is what the Lord meant. Tomorrow is a Sabbath observance. This is before the law, before any law. This is a Sabbath observance, a holy Sabbath to the Lord. So it wasn't a day of rest to go jump in the hammock. It's not meant to be something that enslaves us, but it's a holy Sabbath to the Lord. Bake what you will bake, boil what you will boil, and all that is left over put aside to be kept until morning. So they put it aside until morning, as Moses ordered, and it did not become foul, nor was there any worm in it. Moses said, eat it today, for today is the Sabbath of the Lord. Today you will not find it in the field. Six days you shall gather it, but on the seventh day, the Sabbath, there will be none. This is so important to understanding what this day of rest is all about. Before God gave the moral law through Moses, God applied the creation ordinance to the sons of Jacob in His command regarding the gathering of the manna. Well during that first year, they eventually made it to Mount Sinai. And Moses went up on the mountain and God gave Moses the law. The moral law of God, which included the fourth commandment, the Sabbath. He gave him the ceremonial law for the sons of Jacob and the civil law. What to do when the ox falls into the ditch. In his moral law, God incorporated the creation ordinance, the Sabbath. Exodus 20, verse 8, fourth commandment. Remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy. Set it apart. It should be different, distinct from the other six days. Six days you shall labor and do all your work, but the seventh day is a Sabbath of the Lord your God. In it you shall do no work, you or your son or your daughter, your male or female servant, or your cattle, or your sojourner who stays with you. Why? Well he gives an explanation. A partial explanation. For in six days the Lord made the heavens and the earth, and the sea, and all that is in them, and rested on the seventh day. Therefore... Therefore, you see that word? We know that word from Paul's letters. That means what follows is because of what he's just written. Therefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy. So while the ceremonial law and the civil law, the dietary restrictions, those things, the ox falling in the ditch. While those things applied only to the nation of Israel, the Sabbath was given at creation to all mankind. The Lord blessed the seventh day every seventh day. Why? Because it recalled the Lord's work of creation. He wanted them to remember His work of creation. We rest from our usual activities and work because on the seventh day, God ceased from His work of creation. And He wants us to recall that and meditate on that. That He's God and we're not. And He didn't need to rest. He wasn't tired. He did not cease, by the way, that seventh day from His work of sustaining the universe. He didn't sleep all day. And He's not telling us to do that. He was still sustaining the universe. He established the Sabbath for us to give us a pattern. Now are we going to disregard Him? Or are we going to honor Him? By showing our gratitude for this gift. This gift, this day of rest from our work. It was given to mankind for His benefit so that we might rest from our labors. refresh ourselves, recharge ourselves, commune with our Creator, worship Him, give Him thanks. Now, while they were still at Mount Sinai, God was giving the sons of Jacob the ceremonial and civil laws by which Israel, the sons of Jacob, were going to live for 1,450 years, close to 1,500 years. And these are the laws by which they would be governed. And he included in that law a Sabbath rest for the land. That was not part of the moral law. There's two kinds of law. Things like murder, robbery, rape. These are all wrong in themselves, what the law calls malum in se. Other things, though, like a red light. There's no moral wrong in driving down Liberty Street. But if they put a red light there, a stop sign there, and say, you must stop before you proceed. Well, something that's not morally wrong there is prohibited, though, for some good reason. And this matter of the land was one of those. He gives a Sabbath rest for the land. So we're into this ceremonial law. Not things wrong in themselves, but things which point to Christ most of all. You shall sow your land, Exodus 23, 10, for six years and gather in its yield, but on the seventh year you shall let it rest and lie fallow. ... Now that's good for the land, and God knows that. ...so that the needy of your people may eat. Whatever they leave, the beast of the field may eat. You are to do the same with your vineyard and your olive grove. And we know, of course, they disobeyed even that one. And once again, as he was giving the command of the land Sabbath, God included his command that the people cease from their work activities on the seventh day. 2312 in Exodus. Six days you do your work, the seventh day you shall cease from labor, so that your ox and your donkey may rest. The son of your female slave, the stranger, may refresh themselves. Now Exodus 31, God adds something else. The Sabbath is to serve as a sign, a reminder to the sons of Jacob, for all their generations, that God had set them apart to Himself. So He gave the Sabbath for many of these reasons. And He added a penalty for profaning the Sabbath. What do you suppose that was? Death. Death. Be cut off and stoned. Exodus 31.13, this is a sign. Exodus 31.14, everyone who profanes it shall surely be put to death. 31.15, for six days' work may be done, but on the seventh day there is a Sabbath of complete rest, wholly set apart to the Lord. Whoever does any work on that day shall be put to death. Why? Verse 17, it's a sign between me and the sons of Israel forever. And what's it a sign of? It's a sign of creation. For in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, but on the seventh day He ceased from that labor. Exodus 35. Here's Moses. Now remember, he went up to meet God on the mountain. And he wanted God to show him His glory. Show me Your glory, He said. And God said, Moses, you can't really see My glory and live. And so He tells him to go into the cleft of the mountain. And God passes by and He can see his back. And we're told the face of Moses shone in such a way that the people couldn't even look. So He comes down from the mountain, His face shining. And He adds something else to the Sabbath command. You shall not kindle a fire in any of your dwellings on the Sabbath day. Leviticus 23, God, through the voice of Moses, reviewed all the ceremonial laws for the sons of Jacob. And what did He begin with? The law of the weekly Sabbath. Leviticus 23, verse 3. Six days work may be done. On the seventh day there's a Sabbath of complete rest, a holy convocation. We're still talking about Israel, the sons of Jacob. Deuteronomy chapter 5, as the sons of Jacob neared the time of their entry into the promised land of Canaan. Now it is 40 years later. Moses amplified God's design concerning the Sabbath. Deuteronomy 5.15, You shall remember that you were a slave in the land of Egypt, and the Lord your God brought you out of there by a mighty hand and by an outstretched arm. Therefore, the Lord your God commanded you to observe this Sabbath day. One of the purposes of the Sabbath day is to recall, meditate on, and express our gratitude to God for His blessings. In their case, for their deliverance from bondage in Egypt. How about us? We've been delivered from anything? Something far, far more significant. Deliverance from bondage to sin. How? By Christ's death on the cross. We see God's attitude regarding this idea of setting aside a day to Him. Isaiah 56, 2. How blessed is the man who does this, and the Son of Man who takes hold of it, who keeps from profaning the Sabbath. and keeps His hand from doing any evil. Now as you're thinking about this and thinking, well yes, that was for Israel and now we're not on Saturday and we're in a new day. Think about how the Lord looks upon this whole idea of this seventh day. It doesn't say Saturday, by the way. It doesn't say Sunday. And look at Isaiah 58, 13. If because of the Sabbath you turn your foot from doing your own pleasure on My holy day and call the Sabbath a delight, a holy day of the Lord, honorable, and honor it, desisting from your own ways, from seeking your own pleasure and speaking your own word, what will happen? You will take delight in the Lord. and I will make you ride on heights of the earth. I will feed you with the heritage of Jacob your father, for the mouth of the Lord has spoken. Folks, he's given us far greater blessings than what he gave the sons of Jacob between 1440 B.C. and 33 of the year of our Lord. Nehemiah, when they came back from the Exile. Some were treading wine presses on the Sabbath. So he admonished them for that. For carrying sacks of grain. So throughout their history, the Jews took Sabbath observance very seriously. In the days of the Maccabees, in the second century BC, Antiochus Epiphanes had invaded Judah. gone into the temple, burned a pig on the altar in the temple. And the Maccabees rose up in rebellion against the Seleucids. But when the enemy attacked on the Sabbath, you know what they did? They let themselves be slaughtered. It said a thousand of them. Allowed them to just stood there and took their death. Rather than break the Sabbath, That's how seriously they took this. They didn't defend themselves. In the first century B.C., when the Roman general Pompey was going to come in and conquer the Holy Land, he decided to prepare a siege against Jerusalem. And when did he do it? On the Sabbath. Because he knew he would meet no resistance. And in first century Judaism, When Christ and His disciples were preaching in Galilee, Sabbath observance had developed into one of the three distinctive badges of Jewish life. The other two, circumcision and their dietary laws. Those three, the Sabbath, circumcision, and dietary laws, separated the Jews from all other peoples on the earth. Now while God had commanded that every seventh day be a day of rest. I hope I'm not overloading you too much here. But we have to look at what the Word of God is and how it was taken in order to understand what happened that day near that grain field. And we're almost there. God did not command that the lawyers and rabbis in Israel should add dozens of additional provisions to His Sabbath law. That wasn't part of what He commanded. And that brings us to those grain fields in Galilee. It was a Sabbath. Jesus was walking through the grain fields. His disciples were with Him. They were hungry. So they picked the heads of some grain and ate them. We don't see that in the Genesis creation ordinance. We don't see any abolition of that idea in the fourth commandment. But there were some Pharisees there. We don't know why they were there. Matthew says they saw this. But they objected to this. They tried to find in this picking of some grain and eating it on the Sabbath a way to accuse Jesus, who they wanted to be rid of. Well, what prompts Jesus' teaching here is what they said. And they say it to Jesus, why do you do what is not lawful on the Sabbath? Now we're back to our question from the beginning. Was it unlawful for His disciples to be picking and rubbing in their hands and eating the heads of the grain or the corn on the Sabbath? Well Deuteronomy 23, 25 says this, When you enter your neighbor's standing grain, then you may pluck the heads with your hand, but you shall not wield a sickle in your neighbor's grain. So that's okay. There's no reason you can't go through your neighbor's field and pluck the heads of grain. However, this was a Sabbath. Did that mean you couldn't do it today? Well according to the rabbi's interpretation of the Sabbath law, even that activity was prohibited. And here was their reasoning. Works forbidden on the Sabbath. And the rabbis had drawn up a list of no less than 39 categories of works, subdivided each into six smaller groups. all of which were forbidden activities on the Sabbath. And these included, for our purposes, plowing, sowing, reaping, binding sheaves, threshing, winnowing, grinding. All of these were prohibited on the Sabbath by the rabbis, by the Pharisees. But the disciples had just picked some ears of corn and ate it. How could that violate either God's law or their law? Well, if you know the Pharisees, this will make sense. For them, picking the ears was deemed reaping on the Sabbath, a violation. Rubbing the heads of grain in their hands violated the rule against threshing because the husk would fall away. And the throwing away of the husks constituted winnowing. And all three of those were part of another prohibited activity, preparing a meal on the Sabbath. Four distinct breaches of the Sabbath in one bite of grain. The objection wasn't based on the Word of God. It was based on their own interpretation of God's law. This was the yoke of Pharisaic legalism. And this yoke, the Jewish religious leaders had placed on the Jews. And Jesus came to deliver them from this yoke. What did He say? Matthew 11, verse 28, "...Come to Me, all who are weary and heavy-laden, and I will give you rest. Take My yoke upon you and learn from Me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For My yoke is easy, and My burden is light." That's what He's talking about is this. Sabbath was given by God to free men, to free men from all their worldly occupations so they would be at liberty to attend to the holy assemblies, the holy convocations, to worship God on that day, to remember His blessings, to remember His work of creation, to remember His deliverance of them from slavery. Keeping of the Sabbath was, of course, proper under the law of God, but not the way the Pharisees interpreted it. They interpreted it so that no one could barely move a finger without sinning. That was their idea of the Sabbath. It's very wrong. It was wrong then, it's wrong today. In chapter 11, verse 42 of Luke's gospel, our Lord says to them, You pay the tithe of mint and rue, and yet you disregard justice and the love of God. I think we're getting to the Lord's point here. First of all, these accusations of the Pharisees stem not from the fourth commandment, but from the oral law added by the Jewish religious leaders over the years. And in truth, their real objective here was seeking a case by which to accuse Jesus of unlawful activity. That's what's really going on here. But Jesus has His own ideas about what to do here and what He wants to do with this situation. The Pharisees want to convict Jesus in front of the people of criminal activity. They want to be rid of Him. And now in this eating of grain, walking through the fields on the Sabbath, they think they've got a case. Well here's Jesus' response to their case. In verse 3, Have you not even 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 consecrated bread, which is not lawful for any to eat except the priest alone? And he gave it to his companions. Where did Jesus go to explain all this? To the Word of God. He responds to their criticism by reference to Scripture. He reminds them of David in 1 Samuel 21 when he's on a mission for King Saul. And they come to him elect the priest. And he and his men are hungry. And the only food was this showbread in the temple. I'm getting ready to replace it with the new bread for that week. This bread was prepared, you may recall, in a manner prescribed explicitly by God. It was meant only for use in the tabernacle service. See that in Leviticus 24. The twelve loaves represented Israel's twelve tribes. And Leviticus 24, 9 provided only the priests could eat this bread. David's action was technically a violation of the law. Law given by God. Ceremonial law given by God. Not the moral law. This was a ritual law. Not one that dealt with personal morality. And here's the point, folks. Its purpose, Jesus said, could be overruled when a greater purpose was presented. That's right. And hunger was such a purpose. The hunger of his band overrode the legal prohibition. Because this was one of those malum prohibitums. This was one of those red lights. The showbread. And the restriction as to who could eat it. Human need must not be subjected to barren legalism. Now Jesus would not say you can kill somebody to get at their food. You see the difference? That's a moral wrong. This was just a ceremonial thing. It mattered. It pointed to something important. But eating bread is not a thing morally wrong in itself. Have you not even read, he says, as if to say, you say you're the experts in the law and you don't understand there are exceptions to these ceremonies set forth in the law and the prophets? See, they were reading too much of the rabbinical law and not enough of God's law. They had only a partial view of the Scriptures. They'd pick and choose and form their own doctrines out of one or two verses here and there. Something people unfortunately do today. They failed to grasp that David and the shewbread was an interpretation of the Levitical ordinance. It was showing you that the kindness to somebody fulfilling a human need was more important than a ceremony. Ceremonial law, Jesus said, is not to be absolute in every circumstance. And by the way, Jesus ignored the rabbi's amendments to the ceremonial law. Point is, God cares more for the spiritual condition of the heart than He does for outward observance of rituals. Even His own ceremonial regulations. Now that doesn't mean we ignore what He has commanded. But He didn't leave us regulations. No, He gave us grace. He said, You're in. You're in union with My Son forever. So here, David's hunger was sufficient reason to set aside a divine regulation. And if that was the case, wasn't the hunger of the disciples a sufficient ground to set aside mere rabbinical modifications to the divine law? Mark 2.27 in his account of this passage says the Sabbath was made for man. Not man for the Sabbath. This is a gift, the Sabbath. This time that we can gather together with the Lord. Their practices amounted to elevating the rabbinical amendments to God's law above God's law itself. Their amendments made man the slave of the Sabbath. which was intended to free men. And they placed this rabbinical tradition on a par with God's law. And in practice, it amounted to elevating it above God's law and above the greatest commandment. Isn't it interesting when Jesus was asked, which of the commandments is the greatest? He took them all in one swipe. Love the Lord your God with all the heart, soul, mind, and strength, and love your neighbor as yourself. There's your commandments. They're all summed up right there. So a hungry man can't have some grain? Matthew, in his account, chapter 12, verse 5, Jesus points out the priests performed their priestly duties on the Sabbath. They had to offer sacrifices. but they weren't deemed by God to be profaning the Sabbath. Not even the divine law, as recorded in the Ten Commandments, was to be applied that rigidly. Jesus was making a point here that they needed to understand and apparently had lost sight of. All physical exertion was not prohibited on the Sabbath. What's prohibited is those things that distract one's attention from the worship of God. The greatest commandments. Love of God. Love of others. Take precedence over all others. Ultimately, now here we are. They've got their rules. Jesus has the Scripture. And the question boiled down to this. Who is the authority in this matter? Is it the Pharisees? Their rabbis? Their scribes? Or is it Jesus? Well Jesus answered that question directly for them and for us. He said to them, the Son of Man is Lord of the Sabbath. This was really kind of a staggering claim. I mean, after all, the Sabbath was a divine institution. But we see the same kind of thing here as we saw when He said the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins. That was also something that could only come from heaven. And here's Jesus now declaring that He, a Son of Man, was Lord over a divine ordinance. And so in the exercise of His authority, He can relax the ceremonial rules of the Sabbath in the same manner as other legal ceremonies. Now Matthew, Mark, and Luke, all three record both of these incidents and in the same order. They also record an account of a healing miracle that Jesus worked on a Sabbath. And this was a demonstration of His lordship and of His authority both over the Sabbath and over disease. It's important that we think of Jesus' authority in these things. He has authority over disease. Rabbis did not object to healing on the Sabbath. Well they got that much right. But only if the person's life was in danger. There's no danger, no healing. Now when it was the matter of picking the grain, it was Jesus' disciples who were doing it. Jesus was answering for them and being accused for allowing them to do it. But now they're looking to bring a charge of criminal activity against Jesus for His own actions. They're looking to see, will He heal this man? Will He heal somebody? So as was his custom, we see he goes into the synagogue on the Sabbath and he's teaching. In these words, they were watching him closely, covertly, in the hope of catching him. Catching him healing someone. I mean, what kind of a heart and mind is it that hopes to catch someone helping someone? They showed no concern for this man's withered hand or his need for healing. Jesus knew what they were thinking. And folks, He wanted to address this issue. It didn't just pop up. He wanted to address this issue. He said to the man with a weathered hand, Rise up and stand forth in the midst. And he arose and he stood there. And Jesus apparently here pauses for a moment. Because we're told He looked around at them. Mark says He looked around with anger. Grieved at their hardness of heart. This gave them an opportunity to answer Him. But they didn't say a word. Is it okay for me to heal this man? Matthew's account, we learn that Jesus said more. He even gave them an easy illustration to bring them to a right understanding of things. He used the illustration of a sheep that had fallen into a pit on the Sabbath. And certainly, He says to them, the owner would lift it out even on the Sabbath. Of course. So if you would help a sheep, certainly you would also help a man in need, wouldn't you? Jesus asked, How much more valuable is a man than a sheep? So then, it is lawful to do good on the Sabbath. Now we're talking about the fourth commandment. He said to them, I ask you, is it lawful to do good or to do harm? Evil on the Sabbath. To save a life or to destroy it. He asks them. Smartest man who ever lived. Look at this question. Every time he asked them a question, they couldn't win. For Jesus, to fail to do good, hear this, to fail to do good is to do evil. People say, well, just do no harm. No, no. To fail to do good is to do evil. To fail to help is to harm. There's no middle course for Jesus. Here's this man standing before Him with his hand withered. To do nothing, even on the Sabbath, was to do evil to Him. Was to do harm to Him. To leave Him in that condition when He could do something about it. So He told the man to stretch out his hand. Something he couldn't do. But he did it. And it was restored. Now a Pharisee might say, couldn't Jesus have waited and healed him the next day? Yeah, He could have. But He wanted to make this point. He wanted to teach them and us that love of the brethren, love of the neighbor, is the highest duty next to love of God. And even the divine Sabbath command must yield to the law of love. By the way, this man did not ask to be healed. For those who say you can only be healed if you have faith, there's no indication this man had faith. And by the way, do you notice Jesus didn't do anything. He didn't touch the hand. He didn't even verbally command that it should be healed. He just said, stretch out your hand. And not even the most rigid Pharisee could call that a work. Man was healed by the almighty will of Jesus. And this made it very difficult for those enemies of Jesus to make their case against Him. Jesus was not abolishing the Jewish Sabbath that day. It would come to an end in the year of our Lord, 70. But He was teaching what is the proper use of the Jewish Sabbath. And he was not teaching that we should forsake the assembling of ourselves together on the Lord's Day. He certainly wasn't teaching that. He was saying that our worship of Him includes kindnesses to others in His name. And that resting from our normal activities on the Lord's Day does not mean that works of mercy are forbidden. They're not. Acts of mercy are always right. But he was showing us that this day was set aside by God on the seventh day as a day of worship, prayer, and service to others. Well what do you suppose the Pharisees thought about all this? They were filled with rage. Filled with madness, some translate. And they communed together what they might do to Jesus. This is the wrong response to Jesus' love. From that time forward, Luke doesn't say it here, but they would seek to have Jesus put to death. As for Jesus, He went off to the mountain to pray. Spent the whole night in prayer to God. Now we can't deal with this passage without looking at a couple of questions. Because we're left with some questions here. And these questions perplex the church today in no small way. First though, why would God declare such seeming indifference to the ceremonies which He had commanded in His law? Calvin suggests, and he's right, that external rites, ceremonies, are of no value in themselves. Their value is in what they represent. They were commanded by God for the purpose of directing the sons of Jacob to Him and to the Messiah. And Christ showed that in true value, ceremonies, rituals, are always inferior to deeds of mercy and kindness. It's important we see that here. Now what about the application of this passage to Christians today? Is the Sabbath command still in effect? Well which Sabbath command? And if it's not, how does God desire that we approach each Lord's Day as the first day of the week is now called in the New Testament? we gather in remembrance of Jesus' resurrection. Because He rose from the dead on the first day of the week. Well the Jewish ceremonial and civil law were clearly ended when the veil in the temple was torn in two when Jesus was on the cross. And God affirmed that by His destruction of the temple in the city of Jerusalem in 70 AD. But the moral law of God has never been abrogated. nor has the Sabbath, the day of rest, of Genesis chapter 2. Those weren't just for Israel. God created the earth, its moon, and the sun to provide a year, months, weeks, and establish a day of rest for all mankind. Not just for Israel. And Scripture plainly shows that God desires that we gather together regularly for prayer, for the preaching of His Word, for worship, breaking of bread, for the remembrance of Jesus in the celebration of His supper. And He is pleased. He's pleased when we honor Him by doing acts of mercy and compassion every day of the week, including on the day we now know as the Lord's Day. Not in lieu of gathering together, but in addition to it. Jesus shows us in this passage that the Sabbath was not simply a day to rest in the hammock, but a day to express our gratitude to Him. To recall His work of creation. To recall His deliverance of us. To share His grace. To worship Him. He didn't leave us with any precise rules. He left us with a day every seven that He set apart. as a holy day of rest to Him. So as Christians who've entered into Christ's rest, which we have, we don't observe any of the now obsolete ordinances and ceremonies of Judaism. Luke 23, 56 appears to be the last time there's really a New Testament reference to an Old Covenant ceremony in the Gospels. But Hebrews 10, 25, and I want you to look at it. This is a vital and critical teaching in the New Testament. There, followers of Christ are instructed not to forsake the assembling of ourselves together. Now when we disobey something the Scripture commands, what do we call that? Not because of some legal requirement do we gather. But because that's what the true children of God do. That's what the true children of God desire to do. They can't wait to gather in worship for the preaching of the Word. People who truly love God and His church surely desire to gather together. They find great joy in doing these things. Hebrews 10.24, let us consider how to stimulate one another to what? Love and good deeds. Yes, even on the Lord's Day. Yes, especially on the Lord's Day. Not forsaking our own assembling together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another, all the more as you see the day drawing near. Hebrews 3.13, the same writer had said, "...encourage one another day after day, as long as it is still called today, so that none of you will be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin." God calls us to gather so that we encourage one another. And as a defense, a protection against being hardened by sin. Because it is deceptive. And we have guidance for us in the very earliest days of the church, Acts 2, 42. This was a glorious time, certainly. They were continually devoting themselves to the apostles' teaching and to fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer. Verse 46, day by day, continuing with one mind in the temple and breaking bread from house to house. They were taking their meals together with gladness and sincerity of heart, praising God and having favor with all the people. And the Lord was adding to their number day by day. Those who were being saved. And certainly we've tried to model our practice after this. The confessions, 1689, London Baptist, Westminster, are not Scripture. But they were the result of years of study of godly men. And here's how 1689 describes what the Scripture teaches us. "...as it is the law of nature..." And that's what we see in Genesis 2. "...that in general a proportion of time, by God's appointment, be set apart for the worship of God. So by His word in a positive, moral, and perpetual commandment, binding all men in all ages..." Not just the Jews. He has particularly appointed one day in seven for a Sabbath to be kept holy unto Him, which from the beginning of the world to the resurrection of Christ was the last day of the week, and from the resurrection of Christ was changed to the first day of the week, which is called the Lord's Day, and to be continued to the end of the world as the Christian Sabbath, Christian day of rest, Christian day of cessation. Don't get hung up on the word Sabbath. The observation of the last day of the week being abolished. And you see this, 1st Corinthians 16, 2. On the first day of the week, Each one of you is to put aside and save, as he may prosper, so that no collections be made when I come." Acts 20, verse 7. On the first day of the week, when we were gathered together to break bread, Paul began talking to them, intending to leave the next day. Revelation 110, I was in the Spirit on the Lord's Day. He doesn't call it the Sabbath. He calls it the Lord's Day. And I heard a voice behind me, a loud voice like the sound of a trumpet. London Baptist Confession, paragraph 8 of the Sabbath. Christian Sabbath is then to be kept holy unto the Lord when men, after a due preparing of their hearts and ordering their common affairs beforehand, do not observe a holy rest all day from their own works, words, and thoughts about their worldly employment and recreations, but are also taken up the whole time in the public and private exercises of His worship and in the duties of necessity and mercy. Now we don't have rules. We cannot regard the London Baptist Confession as rules for us. And it sure is good advice. And it would be quite difficult to challenge theologically what's written here. Some take issue, as I just said, with calling the Lord's Day the Christian Sabbath because that idea, in some people's minds, might tend to mix Judaism and Christianity. We don't want that. That would introduce a false and dangerous legalism into the observance of the Lord's Day. But let us remember, the Sabbath wasn't first given to the sons of Jacob. It was given to all mankind. The day of rest of every seventh day is rooted not on Mount Sinai, but in the six days of creation. And it's contained in the moral law of God. Baptist faith and message set forth in The Year of Our Lord 2000, Article 8. The first day of the week is the Lord's Day. It's a Christian institution for regular observance. Okay, it's not a rule. Commemorates the resurrection of Christ from the dead and should include exercises of worship and spiritual devotion, both public and private. Activities on the Lord's Day should be commensurate with the Christian's conscience under the Lordship of Jesus Christ. Now we're not bound by anything written in the Confessions or in any of them. But I believe the Baptist faith and message and the London Baptist Confession of 1689 do reflect what the New Testament teaches us. One more point. There's wonderful news regarding the eternal reality that is foreshadowed in the weekly day of rest. Hebrews 4, 9, there remains a Sabbath rest for the people of God. For the one who has entered into his rest has himself also rested from his works." He's saying those who have entered into the rest of Christ have ceased trying to earn God's blessing by our own works. Hebrews 4, 9 and the whole of the New Testament shows us that Christ has won for all who believe in Him an eternal Sabbath rest. It's rest from our attempts to earn our salvation by our own works. And it's rest from the shame and guilt of our sin. And it's already begun. We who have entered into His rest. It's a blessed rest, folks. It's a rest in Christ. All of us. That is what this Sabbath, this seventh day, foreshadows. It became possible by Christ going to the cross, offering Himself there. And so each Lord's Day, never forsaking the assembling of ourselves together, let us meditate on and be thankful for the rest He has already won for us. We're not trying to be saved. We're not trying to win our salvation. We're not trying to accomplish our salvation. He's already done it. We can rest from our own works. And I believe that perhaps the most significant reason God gave us this day was to remind us of that. And yes, if some urgent need for our merciful aid to someone should arise, which requires us to miss a gathering of worship, Christ shows us here this morning we should not withhold our kindness, our love, and our mercy. We should lend our aid. And we should do it in His name and for His glory. Let us pray. Heavenly Father, Your Word washes over us like a joyful fountain. Father, we thank You that You've given us understanding. The rest You have provided for us, both in this life and for all eternity. We thank You, Lord, that You impart to us knowledge, and assurance that all that you have declared. And so Lord, I pray that this word, that I've not interfered with what you have set down. And that we have all received it in our hearts and in our minds. And we'll respond in gratitude, worship, and obedience for your kingdom, for your glory. In Christ's name,