As we begin, please turn with me to Matthew 12, and we are going to study the passage we read in our scripture reading a few minutes ago. Let me just mention that I am using the Legacy Standard Bible, which is a new update of the New American Standard Bible. So you will notice that there are some minor differences in how it reads, but nothing that will change the meaning. And I want to begin by explaining to you what has been taking place at this point in time in Jesus' ministry. In chapters 11 and 12 of his gospel, Matthew records various reactions to Jesus. In previous messages, we have seen the reactions of honest doubt, of criticism, and indifference. Now the events recorded in chapter 12 bring before us the full manifestation of the hatred and opposition by the leaders of Israel against Jesus. This chapter is in many ways a milestone chapter in the Gospel of Matthew. This chapter is a turning point. In the first half of the chapter, Matthew records the mounting, growing unbelief of Israel crystallizing into conscious rejection of Jesus. And then in verses 22 to 50, he records the blasphemy that follows their rejection. So this is a climatic chapter in Matthew's Gospel. Now, if you study through Matthew, you'll see that things have been building up to this point. Back in chapter nine, you will begin to see the movement building against Jesus. In verse three, they accused him of blasphemy. In verse 11, they accused him of spending his time with tax collectors and sinners. And in verse 34, they said he was demon possessed. The more directly Jesus confronted the Jewish leaders with their internal sinfulness and their external emptiness, the more they hardened their antagonism to him. Criticism and indifference grew into sharp rebuke and then into furious rage. In fact, if you look down at verse 14 of our text, here in chapter 12, for a moment, you'll see that they begin to plot his murder. It says, but the Pharisees went out and conspired against him as to how they might destroy him. So this is a milestone chapter. The storm that ultimately leads to Calvary's cross is gathering on the horizon. So let's begin by looking at the event that really started it all. The chapter begins by recording how their opposition to Jesus crystallized around the issue of the observance of the Sabbath. Notice the beginning of verse one. At that time, Jesus went through the grain fields on the Sabbath. So this is a Sabbath day issue. The crystallization of their rejection of Jesus occurred because he violated their rabbinic traditions for the keeping of the Sabbath. To them, the Sabbath was the absolute epitome of their legalistic system. Everything in their legalistic religious system ultimately focused on that one day. And when he violated their traditions on the Sabbath, he was striking a blow at the heart of their system. That became the final straw, as it were, that broke the camel's back. Now the word Sabbath is a simple word. It means a cessation from labor, a period of rest. a stopping of something. So the Sabbath then was the day they stopped doing what they did on the other days. You'll remember that when God created the world, it says that he rested on the seventh day and he ordained that day to be a day of ceasing from labor for Israel. In Exodus 16, the Jews started practicing the Sabbath while they were in the wilderness. God sent the manna every morning except on the seventh day. And in Exodus 16, verses 23 to 26, we're told, and he, Moses, said to them, this is what Yahweh has spoken. Tomorrow is a Sabbath observance, a holy Sabbath to Yahweh. Bake what you will bake, and boil what you will boil, and all that is in excess, put aside to be kept until morning. So they put it aside until morning, as Moses had commanded, and it did not become foul, nor was there any worm in it. And Moses said, eat it today, for today is a Sabbath to Yahweh. 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. So they started to practice then, and then in Exodus 20 verse eight, when God gave the 10 commandments, the fourth commandment was remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy. So it became a special covenantal sign between God and Israel. Now listen carefully because many people misunderstand this. The fourth commandment, the Sabbath commandment, is the only one of the 10 commandments that is a non-moral commandment. It is the only one that is a ceremonial one. It is the one of the 10 commandments that was uniquely between God and Israel as a ceremonial rule. All the other nine are moral absolutes. And the reason we know this with certainty is because when you turn to the New Testament, Every other commandment is repeated in the New Testament except the one regarding the Sabbath. It is not repeated in the New Testament because it was a unique covenantal sign, much like circumcision was, between God and Israel. And as believers who are under the new covenant, we're told in Colossians 2, 16 and 17, therefore, no one is to judge you in food or drink or in respect to a festival or a new moon or a Sabbath day, things which are only a shadow of what is to come, but the substance belongs to Christ. And in Galatians 4, 9 to 11, Paul chastised the Galatians for turning back to the old habits of practicing the observance of special days and months and seasons and years because they were simply enslaving themselves to the ceremonial law from which Christ had freed them. And that would have included the keeping of the Sabbath in accordance with the Jewish ceremonial law. But at the time of Jesus and his disciples, the Sabbath was, in fact, the ceremonial law of God. It is not a binding law for the church, but it was for Israel. And so Jesus would honor the Sabbath, as would his disciples, but only so far as God intended it to be honored. When Jesus came, you'll remember that he said back in Matthew 5, 17, do not think that I came to abolish the law or the prophets. I did not come to abolish, but to fulfill. So being that he was God, the Sabbath was his own decree and he would fulfill it as he intended it to be fulfilled. But for several hundred years, the various schools of rabbis had added regulation after regulation to the Mosaic Law, going far beyond the teachings of Scripture. Many of those regulations had to do with the observance of the Sabbath, and they were utterly ridiculous. And those, Jesus and his disciples would not honor. The Sabbath became the focus of all of the Pharisees' religious activity, and they added so much stuff to the observance of the Sabbath that instead of it being a day of rest, it was a day of incredible burden. One commentator states, because of thousands of man-made restrictions regarding it, the Sabbath was more tiresome than the six days devoted to one's occupation. It was harder to rest than to earn a living. Now let me tell you what some of these ridiculous traditions were that the rabbis had added to the observance of the fourth commandment. And I couldn't even begin to describe all of them to you. Many of us don't have enough time left in our lives to do that. In one section of the Talmud, which is the collection of the rabbinic teachings, there are 24 chapters listing all of the Sabbath laws. One rabbi spent two and a half years trying to understand just one of those chapters. So if you extrapolate that out at two and a half years per chapter, it would take 60 years to figure out all the things you're supposed to do or not do on the Sabbath. For example, you couldn't travel more than 3,000 feet from your house unless on Friday you had placed some food within 3,000 feet of your house. Then that food was considered to be an extension of your house and you could walk there to get it. And since it was an extension of your house, you could then walk another 3,000 feet. Now, let's suppose you're at home And the place you want to go was more than 3,000 feet from your house, but it was within 3,000 feet of your neighbor who lived across the street. All you had to do was tie a rope from your house to your neighbor's house, and his house and the street between the two of you was considered an extension of your house. And you could then travel the full 3,000 feet to where you wanted to go. That's only two of many ways that you could go another 3,000 feet. If you threw an object in the air with one hand and caught it with the other, that was a violation of the Sabbath. But if you caught it with the same hand, that was okay. If the sun was setting on Friday and it was just about to become the Sabbath and you picked up an object and it suddenly became the Sabbath, you had to drop that object before you drew your arm back or you would be guilty of carrying a burden on the Sabbath. A tailor couldn't carry a needle on the Sabbath lest he be tempted to sew something that ripped. A scribe could not carry his pen because he might write. A student couldn't carry his books because he might read. Nothing could be sold, nothing could be bought, nothing could be washed. A letter could not even be sent, even if you put it in the hand of a heathen to deliver it. No lamp could be lit, and that's why even today, conservative and orthodox Jews have a timer switch on their lights so that they turn on automatically at sundown and turn off at bedtime on the Sabbath. No fire could be lit. Cold water could be poured into warm, but warm water could not be poured into cold. You couldn't take a bath for fear that water would spill on the floor and wash the floor. If there was a lit candle, you couldn't blow it out. Chairs couldn't be moved because the legs tended to drag ruts across the ground, and that was a violation of the prohibition against plowing on the Sabbath. A woman couldn't look into a glass because she might see a gray hair and pluck it out. You could never carry a burden that weighed more than a dried fig, but if an object weighed half that amount, you could carry it twice. You couldn't wear jewelry because jewelry weighed more than a dried fig. When it came to grain and food, the regulations go on and on. You could only eat an egg, which had been laid on the Sabbath, if you killed the chicken for Sabbath breaking. You could not leave a radish in salt because it would become pickled and you would be guilty of working on the Sabbath. And the restrictions go on endlessly about various other foods. They even regulated spitting. You could spit into a rag or on a rock on the Sabbath, but you couldn't spit on the ground because that made mud, and mud was mortar, and that was work. Regarding medical issues, if you had an earache, you could put a wad of oiled fabric in your ear to heal it, but you couldn't wear false teeth because they exceeded the weight limit for burdens. Among the many, many other things that were prohibited, forbidden, were sewing, plowing, reaping, binding, sheaves, threshing, winnowing, sifting, grinding, kneading, baking, weaving two threads, untangling two threads, making a knot and tying a knot and sewing two stitches. And the list goes on and on. Now do you see what the Sabbath had become? It was a pain in the neck. I mean, it was impossible to rest because you're so busy trying to figure out what you're allowed to do or forbidden from doing. No wonder they were laboring and heavy laden. No wonder they were sick to death of the system that had been imposed on them by the legalist. The Sabbath was the focus of everything and the whole nation was under this incredible burden. Now do you understand what Jesus meant when he said, come to me all who are weary and heavy laden and I'll give you rest. That's what the Sabbath was supposed to be. But as far as rest was concerned, it was a joke. And so Jesus came along and paid absolutely no attention to any of that garbage. And it just infuriated the religious leaders. And that became the final act that crystallized their rejection of him. So with that understanding, let's take a look of this incident in verse one. It begins at that time. The word translated time refers to a season or a period of time rather than to a specific chronological time. So during that period of time that he was conducting his Galilean ministry, Jesus went through the grain fields on the Sabbath. Now, what's the first problem that you see here? Well, it's that according to the rabbinical law, Jesus shouldn't be traveling someplace on the Sabbath. According to them, he couldn't go more than 3,000 feet from his home. But he and his disciples are moving along, walking through the grain fields. God's law didn't say they couldn't do that, but the rabbinical law did. And so according to the Pharisees, they were in violation of the Sabbath because they were traveling somewhere. And obviously the grain was close to being ripe for harvesting because it says his disciples became hungry and began to pick the heads of grain and eat. Now, since they were in Galilee, this would mean that this was around late March, early April, nearing the Passover season because that's when the grain usually ripens there. So the harvest is near because the grain had ripened to the point it could be eaten. Now, they didn't have roads like we think of them. There were only paths through fields. And the grain was planted in long rows and people would walk between the rows as they traveled on their journey. And so Jesus and his 12 disciples are walking between the rows in the grain fields heading towards their destination. Now God had made a wonderful provision for travelers in Israel back in Deuteronomy 23. Verses 24 and 25. It says, when you enter your neighbor's vineyard, then you may eat grapes until you're fully satisfied, but you shall not put any in your basket. 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 standing grain. In other words, there weren't any restaurants or truck stops along the way, and so as you're traveling along and became hungry, you could just pick some grapes or pluck some grain and eat it. And that's what they commonly did. When they were traveling through the grain fields, they would pluck the head of the ripe wheat or barley, roll it in their hands to separate the kernel from the outer shell or chaff, and then eat the wheat or barley kernels. In fact, in the parallel passage in Luke 6, we're told in verse 1, that's exactly what the disciples were doing. It says, now it happened that on a Sabbath he was passing through some grain fields and his disciples were picking and eating the heads of grain, rubbing them in their hands. That was God's provision of food for travelers under the Mosaic law. So the disciples were not in violation of the word of God at all. They were poor, they had left their livelihood to follow Jesus Christ and they lived by faith. They didn't carry much of anything with them. They had to depend upon the laws of the land which permitted that and the kindness and generosity of people who fed them and cared for them. And Jesus didn't restrain them because they were in line with the Old Testament scripture. Now back in Exodus 34, The Mosaic law forbade reaping on the Sabbath, even during plowing time and harvest season. But obviously this is not reaping. Reaping is moving into your field with sickles and cutting the grain, binding it up and loading it into wagons to take to the threshing floor. But the scribes and Pharisees had taken this concept of not reaping on the Sabbath and they had redefined it. According to the rabbis, if you rubbed grain between your hands, that was threshing. And if you then blew away the chaff so that you could eat the grain, that was winnowing. And so you couldn't even pull a handful of grain off of a stalk. So this became the incident that triggered their fury against Jesus because it occurred on the Sabbath. That wasn't the spirit which God had intended in banning reaping on the Sabbath, but that's what the rabbis had determined. So this is the event that caused them to become angry at Jesus. So let's look at the accusation. Apparently, there were some Pharisees standing at the end of the grain field, watching Jesus and his disciples coming through the field, just looking for something, with which to accuse him. So verse two says, but when the Pharisees saw this, they said to him, look, your disciples do what is not lawful to do on a Sabbath. Now this is hair-splitting legalism that served no purpose. They had buried God's law so deeply under a pile of legislative tradition that it was unbearable. That's why Jesus said in Matthew 23 forward that the scribes and Pharisees tie up heavy burdens and lay them on men's shoulders. In Acts 15.10, Peter refers to their rules as a yoke which neither our fathers nor we have been able to bear. You know, there are many people who think that if they become a Christian, they're gonna have to give up a lot of things that they like to do and do a lot of things that are hard to do. Well, they ought to try Pharisaic Judaism because that is truly a heavy yoke. The yoke of Christ, even with the standards he has, even with all that his lordship implies, is nothing like this. So they indicted Jesus and his disciples for disobeying their distorted man-made traditions that perverted God's intention in giving the Sabbath day as a day of rest, not a painful day of burdensome nitpicky regulations. So we move from the event to the accusation to the teaching in verse three. Listen to the Lord's answer. This is so good. Now, as we go through this, I want you to notice that Jesus' words are filled with biting sarcasm. He asked them in verse three, have you not read what David did? Verse five, he says, have you not read in the law? That's sarcasm. And then in verse seven, he says, if you had known what this means. You see, the account of David to which Jesus referred was directly from scripture. And the Pharisees considered themselves to be the supreme experts and custodians of what the law and the scripture said. So he says, haven't you read this in scripture? Haven't you read the law? Don't you know what this means? And of course the implication is they didn't have any idea at all what it meant. And then Jesus instructs him and he uses three biblical texts or incidents or principles to show the true meaning of the Sabbath. You see, the Sabbath was meant to bring rest, not hardship. The Sabbath was to reflect what the other nine commandments reflected. Love towards God and love towards your fellow man. That's what the 10 commandments are all about. It's love to God, it's love to man. That's what Paul says in Romans 13, where he says, owe nothing to anyone except to love one another, for he who loves his neighbor has fulfilled the law. Love does not work evil against a neighbor, therefore love is the fulfillment of the law. But the Pharisees didn't have a clue about love. They just suppressed people, intimidated them, and piled burdens on them. They were loveless legalistic functionaries. But the law of God was about love between God and man and love between people. Therefore, the law could never stand in the way of meeting people's needs. That's a very basic point. So first of all, Jesus says that the Sabbath day, Sabbath does not restrict deeds of necessity. Look at his illustration in verses three and four. But he said to them, Have you not read what David did when he became hungry, he and his companions, how he entered the house of God and they ate the consecrated bread, which is not lawful for him to eat, nor for those with him, but for the priest alone. Now, you know, when he picks out David, he's really got them because David was their hero. He was the supreme hero of Judaism. He was number one in the popularity polls in Israel. He was their greatest king, poet, and warrior. More loved, honored, and revered than the patriarchs and the prophets. David was it. And Jesus says, haven't you read what David did? And it reminds them of a familiar story about David and his companions as they fled for their lives south of Gibeah to escape the jealous and vengeful Saul. The story's found in 1 Samuel 21. Saul was after him, and David came to the land of Nob, just north of Jerusalem, where the tabernacle was, and he didn't have any food, and he and his men were really hungry, so he went into the place to talk to Ahimelech, who was ministering in the place of Abiathar the high priest, and he told him that he and his men were hungry, and you know what they gave him to eat? The consecrated bread from off the table in the tabernacle. Now, what was this consecrated bread? Well, every week they baked 12 huge loaves of bread. Each one was made from six and a half pounds of flour. And they were placed on the special table in the tabernacle. They represented the 12 tribes of Israel. Every Sabbath, the loaves were taken away and new loaves were put down. And according to Leviticus 24, when the old loaves were taken away, they were to be eaten only by the priests, no one else. It was sacred, it was consecrated. It was never to touch the lips of a common person, even someone like David, because he wasn't a priest. But David and his men ate the consecrated bread. Verse four says, he entered the house of God and they ate the consecrated bread, which was not lawful for him to eat, nor for those with him, but for the priest alone. So the question is, how come God let him do this? How come God didn't discipline Ahimelech and David? Here's why. because God never invented any law that was intended to overrule human need. Ceremony takes a back seat to the meeting of need. God not only allows necessity to overrule ritual, but the ritual in both David's time and Jesus' time had lost its meaning anyway because the people were so unholy. Listen, God will violate one of his own ceremonial laws. Remember, we're not talking about moral laws at this point. God will even violate a ceremonial law if he must, in order to meet a need. Because God is all about loving men and meeting their needs. But the Pharisees didn't understand that. They didn't understand what Mark adds in his parallel passage in Mark 2 27, where he tells us that Jesus also said to them, the Sabbath was made for man and not man for the Sabbath. In other words, the Sabbath was given for the benefit of man so that he could rest and have his needs met, not so that man could be tied up with all kinds of nitpicky rules for keeping the Sabbath holy. David violated the ceremonial law to fulfill the heart of God and the heart of God is to meet needs. The Sabbath was not intended to restrict necessary deeds of mercy. Next, Jesus goes on to give them a second illustration, verse five. His second point is that the Sabbath does not restrict service to God. He says, or have you not read in the law that on the Sabbath, the priests in the temple break the Sabbath and are innocent? Jesus didn't need to explain this one to the Pharisees. They knew what the law said, they just didn't want to apply it like Jesus did. The priest broke the Old Testament law every Sabbath. How? Because all the various functions that the priest had to do on the Sabbath violated the requirements of rest on that day. They had to work in order to fulfill all the requirements of their service to God. They lit fires on the altar, they killed animals for sacrifices, they had to lift those animals' carcasses and place them on the altar, and a dead animal certainly weighed more than a dried fig. In fact, sacrifices on the Sabbath were double sacrifices, requiring twice the work of the regular daily sacrifices. I remember as a little kid growing up here in the South, Most stores were closed on Sundays and restaurants often didn't open till 1230 or one o'clock after people were out of church. Why were things that way back then? Because Sunday was set aside for church and then rest in the afternoon. It was the Lord's day. Many Christians thought of Sunday as if it was some sort of Christian Sabbath. However, every Sunday, my mom fixed a big Sunday lunch for us, which was a big meal of roast beef and rice and gravy, a vegetable or two, and usually some homemade cornbread or biscuits. She worked hard that day. And at church, there were people working in the nursery and in the children's ministry and teaching Sunday school. And the pastor was preaching two services that day. And no one ever said, you shouldn't be doing all that work on the Lord's day. Why? Because everyone understood that on Sunday, the pastor and others had to work at preaching and teaching and moms had to prepare meals because we needed to eat while we were all supposedly resting on Sunday afternoon. Now, Sunday is not the Christian Sabbath, despite what many thought in those days. If you think it is, I suggest you get Pastor Kreloff's message on the fourth commandment and listen to it. But the point here is the same, and that's really what Jesus is saying here. There was service to God that actually violated the whole ceremonial law. The point is that God doesn't make rules that force themselves to be applied above that which is a higher priority, which is serving God. Look at verse six. Here's a statement that must have knocked him over. He says, but I say to you that something greater than the temple is here. He just said, look, tabernacle rules were set aside. Temple rules are set aside. And I'm telling you that right now there's someone here who's greater than the temple. Now, unless you were a Jew alive at that time, you could never understand what that meant to them. The temple was the greatest symbol and emblem of Judaism. It was the place in which there was the Holy of Holies in which God had dwelt. And Jesus was saying, I'm greater than the temple. Listen again, here's what Jesus was saying. If David could eat the consecrated bread that was in the tabernacle because ceremony does not overrule meeting needs, and if the priest can violate the Sabbath laws in the temple in order to do service to God, then I'm allowed to do it as well because I'm greater than both of those things. Now that statement had to have made the Pharisees boiling angry. They knew the temple was greater than the tabernacle, but to hear someone say that he was greater than the temple was absolutely shocking. They would have been horrified because even if they didn't fully comprehend the meaning of his statement in their minds, there was nothing on earth greater than the temple. In their minds, the only thing greater than the temple was God himself. And now here is this guy standing there telling them that something greater than the temple is here. Jesus was making a claim to be God. This is a claim to deity. What he was really pointing out was that God had dwelt in the tabernacle and God had dwelt in the temple, but now greater than the tabernacle, greater than the temple, God was dwelling among them in the body of the living Lord Jesus Christ. And so if there are exceptions to the tabernacle and exceptions to the temple, then there are most certainly exceptions for the true incarnation of God, Jesus the Messiah. He's more sacred than any man-made house that God has ever dwelt in. This is another one of those monumental claims to deity that Jesus makes. Next, he gave a third illustration. It's found in verses seven and eight. It is that the Sabbath does not restrict acts of mercy. Jesus says, but if you had known what this means, I desire compassion and not a sacrifice, you would not have condemned the innocent, for the Son of Man is Lord of the Sabbath. He's saying you guys are condemning these disciples and they're innocent, they're guiltless. You wouldn't have done that if you had truly known what God really wanted. If you knew that he wanted mercy, not rituals like sacrifices. If you would have properly understood what the prophet Hosea wrote, then you would have known that. You see that phrase, I desire compassion and not a sacrifice, is found in Hosea 6, 6. And the word sacrifice used there embodies the whole ceremonial system, the entire Mosaic system of ritual and ceremony. That ceremonial Sabbath system was only a shadow. It was never more than a symbol, a means pointing to God's gracious and future provision of a perfect sacrifice. But even under the old covenant, Sabbath observance was not a substitute for the heart righteousness and compassion that should characterize God's faithful children. What God really wants is a merciful heart. God is merciful and he commands his people to be merciful. God's looking for obedient hearts. The Pharisees were a million miles from that. He wanted mercy, but they didn't have a clue. I mean, wouldn't you think that the Sabbath would be the day of all days that you would meet the needs of others? Wouldn't you think the Sabbath of all days would be the day to serve the Lord by showing mercy to others? But here the disciples were, walking along, serving the Lord, preaching the kingdom, reaching people, and they had to eat on the way. and they're serving the Lord, their needs had to be met. God wanted to be merciful to them. Wouldn't you think the Sabbath would be the perfect time for that? Interestingly, the Pharisees had indicted Jesus for breaking the Sabbath, but by the time he was done with his response, he had indicted them as hard-hearted external legalists who didn't even know the heart of God. They were the violators of the Sabbath, because the Sabbath was for meeting needs, serving God, and showing mercy. And then he says this, and if they hadn't already popped a blood vessel in their brain from high blood pressure, this would do it. Verse eight, for the son of man is Lord of the Sabbath. What a statement. He's saying, I have authority over the Sabbath and I will interpret its meaning. What a claim. He's either a blasphemer or he's God. That must have goaded them to utter madness. He's saying, you're not in charge of the Sabbath. I'm in charge of the Sabbath. He was directly claiming to be the Messiah and is asserting his authority as God over the Sabbath. You see the term son of man, was used in Daniel 7, 13 and 14 to refer to the coming Messiah, and both they and Jesus knew that. Listen to what David wrote. He said, I kept looking in the night visions, behold, with the clouds of heaven, one like a son of man was coming, and he came up to the ancient of days and came near before him, and to him was given dominion, glory, and a kingdom that all the peoples, nations, and men of every tongue might serve him. His dominion is an everlasting dominion, which will not be taken away, and his kingdom is one which will not be destroyed." That was a clear prophecy of the coming Messiah. And every Jew understood Daniel's prophecy that way. So when Jesus used that term to them, they knew he didn't mean, I'm a man just like the rest of you. No, they knew he was claiming to be the Messiah. So they had to be livid at that point. Can you see why the two issues of Jesus' refusal to participate in their self-righteous rule-keeping and his claim to be God became the focal points of their desire to destroy him? And that's why we don't keep the Sabbath anymore, because the Lord fulfilled it. In Hebrews 4, it says that because of Christ, we've entered into rest. You see, the Sabbath was a figure, a picture. a shadow of that day when God's people would rest, but the Pharisees ruined that illustration. They turned the Sabbath into a horrible experience. So Jesus came along and said, come to me all who are weary and heavy laden and I'll give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me for I'm gentle and humble in heart and you will find rest for your souls for my yoke is easy and my burden is light. And he fulfilled the Sabbath. And that's why there's no need for a shadow anymore. That's why there's no need for an illustration anymore because we've entered into the reality. That's why the New Testament says nothing about keeping the Sabbath. That's why in Romans 14 Paul says some people want to observe certain days which would certainly include the Sabbath and some don't. He says it's no big deal. If they want to, let them do it. If you don't want to, don't worry about it. It's no big deal. And that's why Paul says in Galatians 4 and Colossians 2, don't let anybody judge you in respect of whether or not you keep the Sabbath. Why? Because we have the reality, the shadow is gone, Christ fulfilled it. And Jesus Christ arose on what day of the week? The first day. The day we know today is Sunday. The Sabbath was the seventh day. Jesus arose on the first day, and we see in Acts 20 and 1 Corinthians 16 that the early church met together for worship and teaching on the first day of the week. Why did they meet on the first day of the week? Because that was the day they commemorated and celebrated the Lord's resurrection. And that's why we meet on Sundays. Every Sunday is a celebration, a resurrection day. Sabbath keeping on Saturday is part of the old covenant. We're part of the new covenant. The day we're to meet is to be Sunday. Well, enough said on that issue. So thus far we've seen the event on the Sabbath day that started the whole interaction, the accusation of Jesus by the Pharisees and the teaching he gave them as to why they were wrong. Now Jesus wraps up this matter with a demonstration in verses nine to 13. Jesus didn't give them instruction and then walk away. He confronts them directly. Apparently this whole conversation took place close by their local synagogue. It may have been how it was that the Pharisees saw the disciples eating the heads of grain as they walked through the grain field. These guys were probably standing outside of their synagogue and perhaps across the street there was a large field of grain. And they could see Jesus and the disciples coming through the field towards them. And as they arrived near the synagogue, those Pharisees stopped him and started accusing him of Sabbath violations. So after shutting them down with his divine interpretation of the Old Testament Sabbath law, Jesus stops talking with them, turns away and walks into their own synagogue. It's like walking directly into the lion's den. And his purpose for doing such is that he's going to illustrate the whole lesson he just gave. He knew who was in that synagogue, a man with a paralyzed withered hand. And the Pharisees knew it too because they used that man's presence to challenge Jesus further. So verse 10, they questioned Jesus saying, is it lawful to heal on the Sabbath? And why did they ask that? Well, Matthew tells us, so that they might accuse him. They were completely unaffected by what Jesus had reminded them about in verse seven, that God desires compassion and not a sacrifice. Their only purpose in listening to anything Jesus said or in watching anything that he did was so that they could accuse him of violating the Sabbath. They were not looking for the truth, but for a way to dispose of this young upstart rabbi who dared to make a sacrilege of their revered traditions and supposedly blaspheme God with his claims. And so here is this man with a paralyzed hand and they ask, is it lawful to heal on the Sabbath? You realize what this tells us? First, it means that they understood and believed that Jesus could heal. That was indisputable. Where do they think he got the power for that? You would think they would recognize that his power was because he was God in flesh, but instead we'll find out later in the chapter, they thought he got it from Satan. It's sad, but the same miracles that convinced those who were humble of Jesus divinity and Messiahship confirmed the proud and self-righteous in their unbelief and rejection. So they say, is it lawful to heal on the Sabbath? And of course, the reason they picked a man with a paralyzed hand is because that's not a life or death issue. You see, according to their rabbinic tradition, You could only give enough medical assistance on the Sabbath to keep someone from dying. But you weren't allowed to make him well. You were only allowed to barely keep him alive. So a guy with a paralyzed hand was not a life or death situation. He had had that paralyzed hand so long that it had withered and atrophied from the lack of use. So Jesus responds to them in typical Jewish fashion by answering their question with a question. Verse 11, and he said to them, what man is there among you who has a sheep and if it falls into a pit on the Sabbath will not take hold of it and lift it out? Now you might wonder, well, but wouldn't that violate their Sabbath law? Not in their thinking because that was economics. You see a sheep represented money. And any Jew, including a Pharisee, would find some way to rescue a sheep in such a situation, even on the Sabbath. Either within the tradition or in spite of it, he would find a way to get that sheep out of the pit. And because the Pharisees didn't argue with him about that point, it proves the assumed answer is correct. And then he asked in verse 12, how much more valuable is a man than a sheep? Now that sounds like a simple question, doesn't it? But you see, while they would have denied that sheep are better than men, in reality, they treated their sheep as more important because sheep represented an economic interest and gain to them. Other people were meaningless to them. They considered themselves better than others. So they treated their flocks and livestock with greater respect and kindness than other people. They contemptuously subjugated human life and welfare to religious tradition. So ethical conduct is the issue and the Lord makes that very clear at the end of verse 12. He summarizes and says, so then it is lawful to do good on the Sabbath. And by the way, all the time that he's talking, Mark and Luke tell us that he called this guy with a paralyzed hand up front and stood him right in front of the entire congregation. So he's got him standing there beside him and it's a very dramatic scene. The man is standing there and Jesus is confronting them saying, you tell me, you'd rescue a sheep, would you rescue a man? Is it lawful to do good on the Sabbath? Well, what can they say? If they say, yes, it's lawful to do good, they're stuck because he's gonna say, well, then it'd be good to heal the man, wouldn't it? But if they say, no, it's not lawful to do good on the Sabbath, then what have they said? That it would be evil. So he says, it's lawful to do good on the Sabbath and they don't wanna say anything, so they don't. I think a chilling silence prevailed. Mark says that Jesus looked around at them with anger, grieved at their hardness of heart. They didn't care if the man was healed, they were trapped. Verse 13, and he said to the man, stretch out your hand. And he stretched it out and it was restored to normal like the other. Was that a good thing for the man? Of course it was. If there was any meaning and purpose for the Sabbath, wouldn't it be to do good on the Sabbath? Sure. But to know to do good and have the ability to do good, but not to do it is evil. If ever there was a time for blessing, it was a Sabbath. As the Lord of the Sabbath was authority to determine what the purpose of the Sabbath was to be, Jesus demonstrated that Sabbath was the supreme day for doing good. Well, that was the demonstration. Now we finally come to the conspiracy. Verse 14 says, but going out, the Pharisees took counsel together against him as to how they might destroy him. Neither the power of Jesus' argument nor the power of his miracles moved the Pharisees. They refused to be convinced. Jesus had indisputably connected the Sabbath with the heart of God. Benevolence, mercy, kindness, goodness, and compassion. Jesus' lesson is very clear. He says, my disciples and I broke a ceremonial law to meet our need. That's the heart of God. We broke a traditional law of not going more than 3,000 feet in order to serve God. That's also the heart of God because God wants mercy to be shown, not ritual. But because they were so hung up on Jesus violating their Sabbath traditions, they went out and took counsel against him as to how they might destroy him. Mark 3, 6 tells us that they went out and immediately began taking counsel together with the Herodians against him as to how they might destroy him. That's significant because you see, the Herodians were the Pharisees' arch enemies. They were an irreligious, worldly political party that supported Herod. They were the antithesis of the Pharisees in every way. The fact that the Pharisees sought to join forces with them reveals how desperate they were to do away with Jesus. The religious legalists joined forces with the secular libertarians to destroy an enemy they considered to be even more dangerous than each other. You see, legalism is the enemy of grace. Even the Mosaic law, demanding as it was, was a reflection of God's grace, a means of guiding people towards Jesus Christ, the one true and only hope of coming to God. As Paul explains in Galatians 3.24, the law has become our tutor unto Christ so that we may be justified by faith. If God's own law was only a shadow, How much less spiritual substance does human tradition have? If even divine law cannot save, how much less value does human tradition have? And just as trust in tradition and good works is a barrier to salvation, it's also a barrier to faithful living after salvation. According to Galatians 3, 13 and 14, we've been redeemed from the law's curse so that we might live by faith. Yes, Ephesians 2.10 says we're created in Christ Jesus for good works, but that doesn't mean that we make up rules about how to do that and impose them on ourselves and others. So that leads me to ask you, why do you come here to church? Why do you worship? What's your purpose? Are you here because it's a weekly ritual that you feel obligated to do? Are you here because you think it's a requirement of God's law? Oh, I must do this and I must not do that. Not because there's any moral requirement in scripture to do it, but simply because by living this ascetic lifestyle, I'm pleasing God. If you're defining true spirituality in terms of a bunch of little things you do or don't do, Or is your relationship to God merely function rules and laws? Or do you realize that those are the only things to assist us and they can never stand in the way of meeting needs and serving God and showing mercy? Because you see, if they do, they violate the heart of God. You know, some Christians are so legalistic, they literally alienate other believers. And some of the things they're legalistic about aren't even things that God talks about in scripture. So ask yourself, where's your heart towards God? Are you trapped in a bunch of rules or do you realize that Christ's yoke is easy and his burden is light? I hope you aren't keeping a bunch of rules in your Christian walk because you think doing so earns your brownie points with God. Yes, you have to learn how to give up some of your rights in order to better serve weaker believers without causing them to stumble, but at the same time, don't live your life like you're stuck in a box of rules and regulations that you have to keep so that God will be happy with you. It doesn't work that way. If you're a believer, Christ has redeemed you from the curse of the law. You can never do anything that will make you more righteous in his sight, because he already sees you through the perfect righteousness of his son, which has been imputed to you. Yes, you wanna live a life that is increasingly sanctified and conformed to the image of Christ, but that doesn't mean that you earn your sanctification by keeping rules. You're sanctified by the spirit of God as you obey God's word and his fruit will become more and more evident in your life. You will put off the old man and put on the new man in your spiritual walk and it will happen naturally as the spirit bears that fruit. But some of you here today may be caught in some religious system or mindset in which you're trying to earn your way to heaven by your own good works and you feel like you're collapsing under a great burden because you never know if you've done enough. If so, I urge you to come to Jesus Christ and trust him alone. He said, my yoke is easy, my burden is light. He didn't lay any burdens on his followers. Turn from your sin and trust him. Salvation is by grace alone, through faith alone and Christ alone. No works. If you wanna know more about God's grace and salvation, come speak with one of our elders after we close. Let's pray. Father, I pray that every one of us here today would truly understand that the two greatest commandments are to love you with all of our heart, soul, mind, and strength, and to love our neighbors as ourselves. And by doing such, your word says we fulfill the whole law. There's no need at all for all kinds of man-made rules and regulations and works to do in order to please you, simply to love and serve one another as Christ has loved and served us. Lord, I pray for anyone here today who has not yet submitted to Jesus Christ as their Lord and Savior, that they would turn to him today and experience that great freedom from the burden of trying to earn their way to heaven. May all of our service to you be from hearts that love you and desire to honor you, and not because we think we'll make you love us more, because that's impossible. In the precious name of Jesus, our perfectly righteous Savior, we pray, amen.