Let's turn to God's Word. We turn first to Isaiah's prophecy, chapter 58, this Old Testament instruction on the Sabbath. Stand with me for the reading of God's Word. Isaiah 58, verses 13 and 14, and then to Luke's gospel, chapter 6. Isaiah 58, if you turn away your foot from the Sabbath, from doing your pleasure on my holy day, and call the Sabbath a delight, the holy day of the Lord honorable, and shall honor him, not doing your own ways, not finding your own pleasure, nor speaking your own words, then you shall delight yourself in the Lord, and I will cause you to ride on the high hills of the earth and feed you with the heritage of Jacob your father. The mouth of the Lord has spoken. And now to Luke chapter six. Now it happened on the second Sabbath after the first that he went through the grain fields and his disciples plucked the heads of grain and ate them, rubbing them in their hands. And some of the Pharisees said to them, why are you doing what is not lawful to do on the Sabbath? But Jesus answering them said, have you not even read this? What David did when he was hungry, he and those who were with him, how he went into the house of God, took and ate the showbread and also gave some to those with him, which is not lawful for any but the priests to eat. And he said to them, the son of man is also Lord of the Sabbath. Now it happened on another Sabbath also that he entered the synagogue and taught, and a man was there whose right hand was withered. So the scribes and Pharisees watched him closely, whether he would heal on the Sabbath that they might find an accusation against him. But he knew their thoughts and said to the man who had the withered hand, arise and stand here. And he arose and stood. Then Jesus said to them, I will ask you one thing. Is it lawful on the Sabbath to do good or to do evil, to save life or to destroy? And when he had looked around at them all, he said to the man, stretch out your hand. And he did so. And his hand was restored as whole as the other. But they were filled with rage and discussed with one another what they might do. to Jesus. The grass withers and the flower fades, but the Word of our God abides forever. We turn in the preaching of the Word to Luke chapter 6 verses 1 through 11 to look at the matter of the Lord's day, and more particularly the Lord of that day, the Lord of the Sabbath, our Lord Jesus Christ. I was talking this week with our FedEx driver. And. who is a great guy and sort of become a friend of our family, really has actually, and we were talking about his work schedule. He came a little late one night this week and I happened to be thinking about preaching from this text and in God's providence we got to talking about his work schedule and he told me that it was a particularly busy week because I believe Wayfair had had furniture on sale and he was delivering endless amounts of furniture late into the night. He was running a busy schedule. I didn't know there's some 200 deliveries in a day. It doesn't even seem possible. And I said, well, how many days a week do you work? And he said, six. And I said, like God, who works six days, and one day he rested. And he said, well, my Nana would not want to know this, but sometimes I also have to work Sundays. It's an interesting little phrase. not want to know this. And so we got talking about life in Christ's church and worship and rest, and he said, like so many people today, that it's a hard world. He and his wife raise their family and try to make ends meet, and the pressure is high to just keep working. I was reminded in turn of a class I taught years ago group in another church years ago, I was teaching a group of seniors on the topic of the Lord's Day. And I asked them the question, what was life like when you were growing up on Sundays? And they were from all kinds of different backgrounds. I was teaching in a Presbyterian church, but they had grown up Methodist and Episcopalian and Presbyterian and Baptist. However, They told of a time in this country where universally you would not mow your lawn, you would not make someone else work, you would not go out for lunch, and you would go to the House of the Lord. I was reading years ago Canadian historian Pierre Burton, and he was writing about the Yukon Gold Rush. And maybe I've told this story before, but the Mounties on the main street of Dawson City had set up a speed trap. Now you might wonder who was speeding. It was a sled dog race on the Lord's Day. And because of this, the Mounties actually arrested the racers for breaking the Sabbath day. That's the frontier of the Yukon. There wasn't much going well in Dawson City in terms of the moral fiber of that place. Still, there was a sensitivity to this command. David McCullough, when he was writing about the story of the building of the Brooklyn Bridge, told a story that the bridge works. It's a long story. There was an explosion, and because it was on a Sunday, In mostly Catholic Brooklyn, even at that time, most people were on a day of rest and no one got hurt because of that. It's interesting that there was a time when our culture more broadly believed that there was something better and higher and more important than the passing things of this world. And it was worth, whether that theology was weaker or stronger, it was worth devoting one day completely to God. that this was part of being a Christian. Today things are different, it's gone. I'm looking at a generation as I look around where some of these ideas seem foreign to you. In my own lifetime, there was a Ford dealership in my hometown called Eastway Ford, and I grew up in Ontario, Canada. Ontario is a very liberal jurisdiction. You wouldn't think this. In my lifetime, the owners of that Ford dealership were some of the first in Canada to challenge Sunday shopping laws. And they successfully had the laws overturned. Again, younger than myself. Some of you could never even imagine a world like that, but it wasn't long ago. But here's the question. Sometimes older is not better. What we need to ask ourselves is, are the older ways biblical? What was it? that drove this sort of conviction in life. And in Presbyterianism, much narrower, we have a history of a very high view of what we call the Lord's Day. It's contained in our confession of faith. We have a chapter on religious worship on the Sabbath day. We have a significant description of the same in the Westminster larger and shorter catechisms. Why? Where did that come from? Each generation needs to ask, what do the scriptures teach? Most popular, I would think today, even in evangelicalism, this is some sort of fossil. From the Old Testament, legalism. We have Christ, we have freedom, we have the new covenant. Try that with the seventh commandment, you shall not commit adultery, and it immediately becomes less popular. Why the four? A careful study of the Scriptures raises serious questions about a quick write-off. Sabbath begins with God in creation. It's not part of, first, the mosaic economy. It's a creation ordinance. In a mysterious way, it belongs to God. He made all things in six days, and then God rested. What does that mean for you and me? It existed before Sinai. The collection of manna was regulated by the Sabbath day, Exodus 16, before the Ten Commandments were given. The law reveals the holiness of God, God's moral character, something abiding in it. And that's the question in the text before us, the nature of this day, which we now call the Lord's day in the new covenant. There's two sketches in the text, two sketches back to back about our Savior on the Sabbath day and being challenged about the day and what should and shouldn't be done on the day. And in sketch number one, we'll see that our Savior understands the works of necessity. Feeding of His disciples, that was just fine on that day. But more than that, that He was the Lord of the day. And then the second, that it was a day for mercy. Great mercy. And if there's one thing I want you to remember this morning, is that when God gives you a day to rest, He's giving you mercy. And that will help you most of all understand that day. The first sketch. What we really learn here is the identity of the Lord of this Lord's day. I'm using the phrase the Lord's day from Revelation 1 in verse 10, where John, the apostle John in the spirit on the Lord's day, he has a day that in some way belongs especially to Jesus Christ. Why is it called the Lord's Day? And here Jesus says, I'm the Lord of the Sabbath. How does that come to be in this text? Well, first of all, the Sabbath is in the very first phrase. Now it happened on the second Sabbath. Some of your Bibles have a slight textual variant, a Sabbath, but this at least reminds us of the following, a Sabbath pattern in Jesus' ministry. In Luke chapter four, he's teaching in the synagogue on the Sabbath day. That's the beginning of his ministry. Later in chapter 13 in verse 10, and even his disciples in chapter 23 in verse 56, they're resting on the Sabbath day, they're worshiping on the Sabbath day, they're in the synagogue on the Sabbath day. This principle is woven into Jesus' life, cannot be separated from how he and his disciples not only think, but live. It's been 1500 years, the opening of the New Testament since Moses. But before that, Noah, there's an intimation he's operating on a seven-day schedule on the ark, all the way back to Adam resting in the garden, all the way back to God. I will say in his side here, the Sabbath is not just a family day. Some people say, I just want a day for my family. No, you need to understand that its ultimate origin is that it's a day set apart, made holy, sanctified by God Himself, belongs to Him. The scene unfolds on that day, the disciples are plucking heads of grain and ate them, rubbing them in their hands. Now, if you went to Deuteronomy 23, 25, there's a law about this in the Old Covenant, where it says that if you're walking through your neighbor's field, you're not allowed to harvest that field, but it was permitted to take some grain, rub it in your hands, and eat a little snack as you're passing through, and that this is not theft. This is provision for your neighbor. So the argument here is not that they were stealing. In a moment, the Pharisees are going to make an argument that they were breaking the Sabbath day by working. This simple act of rubbing the grain in their hands. Look, some of the Pharisees said, why are you doing what is not lawful to do on the Sabbath? Who are the Pharisees? Experts in the law. They're the biggest political party in Israel. The oldest reference to them is about 160 years before Christ. They are a well-established political force. They control the synagogues, and they are the teachers of the Word of God. They're the gatekeepers of the law. And their question is, you might not be stealing, but you're harvesting, and if you're harvesting, you're working, and if you're working, you're breaking the Sabbath. What? Kind of scandal. Now, you have to get a little sense of the way the Pharisees interpreted the law. They had something called the Mishnah. They had a list of 39 kinds of works that were prohibited, including sewing and reaping, weaving two threads, untangling two threads, tying knots, untying knots, unless you could untie the knot with one hand, then it wasn't work. And it's this kind of context and this kind of very wrong view of the law of God that's behind this question. Why the question? Behind that wrong interpretation of the law is this question. God said, you shall do no manner of work. Exodus 20, 8 to 11. Why is the day so important to the Jewish mind? Because God gave a clear command. And there's a moral duty of not working. And the master of the house was responsible for the house to keep the command. You nor your son nor your daughter, your male servant nor your female servant, your cattle, stranger within your gates. In other words, the law is given to the householder and the householder was to make sure there was universal rest and Jesus is the master. These are his disciples and he's not keeping the house. What does Jesus say? Have you not read even this? That what David did when he was hungry and those who were with him, how he went into the house of God, took and ate the showbread and also gave to some who were with him, which is not lawful for any but the priest to eat. What is Jesus doing here? He says, do you remember there was a time, just skip over for a moment from the Sabbath day, let me help you think about something else. There was a time, you remember when David in need, When he was on the run from Saul, he had for his sustenance some of the showbread, which Leviticus tells us, 24-9, was for Aaron and the priests. He ate it in order that he might stay alive. And Jesus is indicating here that he hadn't sinned. And that the principle here of necessity, work of necessity, eating, was such that this was not a breaking of the law. So my disciples, as they plucked the heads of grain, like you, likely, unless you were in a hurry, ate your breakfast this morning, have not broken the law of God. This was Jesus' interpretation. Now what is Jesus not saying here? Very carefully, he's not disregarding the law. He's interpreting the law. And what's important to get an idea of the Sabbath is the following. Everything that we've talked about so far is under the economy of Moses. the Levitical law, both the showbread and the Ten Commandments, the Fourth Commandment, Jesus is making an argument within that structure that the Fourth Commandment was not broken. Because some people say, see what we do. In the New Covenant, things are different. Jesus changes the law. No, he's arguing within the Mosaic economy that this was not a breaking of the law, but a right use of the law. And then he says something more powerful. The Son of Man is also Lord of the Sabbath. Let's pull some things together from this statement. First, he uses the title Son of Man. The Messiah. Daniel, who went to the ancient of days and had an everlasting kingdom, who would sit on the throne of David forever. That is me, and I am Lord, that great title that would belong to Jesus Christ. We confess Him as Lord to the glory of God the Father. The Son of Man, who is Lord of all, is Lord of this day, and He, the Lawgiver, has the right to interpret and apply that law, and He does so perfectly. He's not disregarding it. He's claiming it as His own Word and He's teaching us how it works. The Son of Man is Lord of the Sabbath, the owner and the ruler. He's the one who with supernatural divine power, this is important, He's God and man. He rested on the seventh day. He didn't just give the law. It's moral purity and character come from Jesus Christ Himself. He's the Lord of the Sabbath, the owner of the Sabbath. It's my day. I'm ruler, master, interpreter. How dare you accuse the lawgiver of misunderstanding the law? The eternal Son of God, who rested with the Father and the Holy Spirit, delighting in His works, is speaking. This is mine. This reflects my eternal holy character, that of the Father and the Spirit. He affirms in this way, the fourth commandment, remember this Sabbath day to keep it holy. It means Shabbat, a day to cease and desist from labor. It is for you and your children after you, your slaves and your beasts. It's a holy convocation to the Lord, Leviticus 23, for worship and synagogue gatherings. It's mine. I am the Lord of it, the first keeper of it ever, the teacher of it, the interpreter of it, the giver of it. J.C. Ryle, let us settle in our minds the fourth command has never been repealed by Christ. We have no more right to break the Sabbath day under the gospel than to murder or steal. As the architect repairs a building, so Jesus came to repair and restore the day that belongs to him. It's not for petty legalistic purposes, but it is for rest in God. Scene two. Now it happened on another Sabbath. These two narratives are put together here and in the Gospel of Mark as well and Gospel of Matthew, the Lord of the Sabbath phrase is found there as well. The Gospels are very clear about this. This is important. These two narratives together are important. On another Sabbath, we have a reinforcement of the principles of the day. She's in the synagogue again, and it just so happened that there was a man whose right hand was withered. There was someone there who had a serious deformity of his hand who, because of this, could only do probably half or less of an ordinary laborer's work and would have been in great need. Someone who was also publicly deformed. Somebody who was, in this case, a good test case for the Pharisees again. You have to wonder about the kind of thinking that you read about in verse 7, You know, it's like going to a hospital on a Sunday, not praying that someone would be healed in case the Lord did it on the Lord's day. It's so far from understanding the nature of the day. As we keep reading this unspoken question, verse 8, He knew their thoughts. He always knows what you're thinking, what I'm thinking, and it's all through the Gospels. We read, The unspoken question becomes the knowledge of Jesus Christ, or is the knowledge of Jesus Christ, and so he does what he did earlier with the healing of the paralyzed man. He sets up a public showdown. He knew their thoughts and said to the man who had the weathered hand, arise and stand here. Again, you would think, chapter 5.22, chapter 9.47, John 2.25, the Pharisees would stop arguing with a man who could read their mind, but they don't. So he preemptively challenges them. He calls their bluff. He rises to the challenge and he says to the man with the other hand, stand here. And then he said to them, I will ask you one thing. Is it lawful on the Sabbath to do good or to do evil, to save life or to destroy? What is this day for? What is it about? Evil and the destruction of life, or good and salvation? That's the question. Unafraid, unflinching, Lord of the Sabbath, stand up, sir. You have a withered hand. Here's my challenge. And then he looks around at every one of them. Look at the text. And when he had looked around at them all, this is not somebody on his heels. This is the Lord of Sabbath claiming his authority. The craziness that is legalism is also illustrated here. So blind to the needs of others, so bitter against the goodness of God. If you know Jesus Christ, do you have any moment's hesitation about what he would do with a man with a withered hand that needs help? Do you have any hesitation? Is there anything possibly that would make you think, he would not hear the appeal for help. It's like asking a mother if she's going to give her baby milk. Flowing from Jesus Christ is mercy. It's critical to understand why the Lord gave the Sabbath day. You could call it a gospel day. It's always curious to me that Israel had lived under Pharaoh's whips, and what I mean by that is if you could have taken the shirts off the backs of the laborers traveling to the Red Sea, you would have seen the scar marks of the slave master. And then the Lord takes them to a mountain, and He says, You must rest. I want you to imagine you had a very hard week at work. You've got a big project due on Monday. You've worked 45 or 50 hours. It's Friday noon. Your boss is hovering around, and you are behind. It's not just you, but it's the whole office. And your boss stands up at lunchtime and says, you know, Monday's not that important. Why don't you all go home? We'll pick it up next week. How many of you would say, excuse me? I'd prefer to work. Instinctively, all of us understand mercy and we say, yes, I'm going home. I have things that I could do. The Lord of the Sabbath Is it lawful to do good on the Sabbath day? To save life. And when He looked around at them all, what does He do? He illustrates the answer. He said to the man, stretch out your hand, and he did so. And his hand was restored as whole as the other. Here is a sign of God's favor, healing, deliverance, to do good, to save life. It's always been a sign of God's favor. In Ezekiel 20, God said to His people, i have given you the sabbath as a sign of my covenant with you i will be your god and you will be my people and i will give you rest so he heals What was he saying? The heart of this day is the communication of life and goodness and glory. It's a flowing river of goodness. We read from Isaiah chapter 58 a moment ago. The promise there is that God will feed you on that day if you delight in it. With the heritage of Jacob your father, He'll open the windows of heaven, to use the language of Malachi, to give you blessing and goodness. And humble faith says, yes Lord, I believe. I will lay aside the passing things of this world." Lord Jesus, give me goodness, give me salvation, give me rest. And so the principle of the Sabbath is to be filled with service to God and neighbor. Jesus' thundering voice is the Lord of the Sabbath. It's for good, it's for salvation, it's for life. Now, how did this become the first day of the week? I don't have time to go into all the details, you can ask me later, but I can say this, that as God finished His work of creation on the sixth day, and entering into rest on the seventh day, in the new covenant, in the glory of the new covenant, as Jesus Christ Himself rises from the dead, and on the first day of the week enters Himself, the firstfruits of the new creation, with power and glory, meets with his disciples on that day, and then the next week after that, and then Pentecost, seven weeks later, pours out the Spirit on that day, and then John in the Revelation, the Spirit comes on John on the Lord's day, and what does he see there? The panoply of the worship of heaven, men and angels, and the rule of Jesus Christ, all on the same day. For Christ has entered into his rest, and we in him. I want you to think about something else. Jesus is God, but he's also a man. Here's a mystery. After the resurrection, who is keeping that day? Jesus, the God-man, in his exalted humanity, still, maintaining fellowship with his people on one day out of seven. Our confession, therefore, this Sabbath is to be kept holy to the Lord. When men are taken up the whole time in public and private exercises of his worship, in the duties of necessity, eating, and mercy, healing and doing good. And so service to God, service to our neighbor. Years ago I found out on Amazon that I can actually pick what days of the week I want deliveries. I've also learned that you can't do it with the post office and you can't do it with Sam's club. So every now and then we get a Sunday delivery. But I happen to know that my FedEx van doesn't want to work and I don't want him to work. There's some things that we need to do. We need to feed ourselves and we need to feed our children. But the rest of the day is to be filled with mercy, goodness, first worship to God to echo His glory back to Him, and then the maximum good we can do to our neighbor, signified in the healing on the Lord's Day by Jesus. And so we go to the carriage house, and we have hospitality, and we have morning and evening worship, and we fill the day with all the goodness of God. And, because there's a moral principle, We don't take up unnecessary labor. We rest. We rest. And that's what's at the heart of the day. I said a moment ago it's a gospel day. I want to go back to the text for a minute. I wonder what the man with the withered hand thought about the Sabbath day. You ever wonder about that? You think he would ever remember God's day of rest the same way? When the power and glory of the Lord of the Sabbath, who brought blessings from heaven to earth, looked at a man in the crowd knowing the cost. And we'll get to that in a moment. Knowing the cost, which would be the cross. The cost of the healing on that day would be the cross. And without any fear of foes, but with open hearted mercy, said to the man with the withered hand, stretch out your hand. Why does Jesus do miracles? They weren't permanent. There's no sort of force shield this man carried with him the rest of his life. He's dead. Lazarus is dead. What's Jesus doing? That you may know that the Son of Man is Lord of the Sabbath. That you may know that in Me there is goodness, salvation, and life. That you may have a foretaste of the new creation which will be secured by My cross and resurrection. So I heal this man. So I give My goodness. A sign, John 2 verse 11, one of the signs that authenticated His ministry and pointed ahead to the new creation. A sign in which He connected divine goodness with His day. And where he proclaimed, I will deliver you from sin, from misery. I will deliver you from your sorrows. I will give you my very best. I will feed you with the heritage of Jacob, your father. The mouth of the Lord has spoken this. So it's a day of rest. You know what it is? It's a little bit of heaven on earth. a little bit of heaven on earth. Have you ever wanted rest? Have you ever come to the end of yourself? Tired, worn, physically, mentally, brokenhearted. Do you have rest? The deepest kind of rest our hearts long for is that our conscience would be at peace and that we would be at rest with God. Maybe inside today your conscience is bothering you, you can't sleep, you're filled with fears, you can't rest. Afraid maybe of what others think of you, afraid of danger, afraid of trials, afraid of God's judgment. Hear the Lord of the Sabbath, see Him in action. I provide for my disciples. I heal the sick. I do good. I bring salvation. This is who I am. One of Jesus' most famous gospel calls, I'm sure you know it. Come to me, all you who are weary and heavy laden, and I will give you rest. The greatest irony of this command and the gospel call connected to it is in verse 11. Look at that language, look at verse 11. They were filled with rage and the machinery that would bring Jesus to the cross was put in action. Could you imagine, what does it take in the human heart to see a broken-hearted man with a withered hand be healed by divine power as Jesus gives rest. And your response is rage. The juxtaposition in the text is telling this is why they would nail him to the cross. They discussed with one another what they might do to Jesus. We don't want your rest. Why? Because you will not be our Lord. and we will not bow to you." This is the twisted nature of sin. Instead, run to Jesus Christ with open arms and say, Lord, I need your rest. I need what you came to bring. I need you, Lord of the Sabbath. I acknowledge you as Lord of the cosmos, Lord of the Sabbath, Lord of my life, the source of goodness. And what I have just seen with my eyes of faith in that synagogue long ago reminds me of who you are for me. What's the offer of the cross and the empty tomb? I will take on myself all your futilities, the entirety of the curse, all of your sadness, tears, and sins. I will take it all. So that in that great exchange, you might have rest for your souls. That you might take my yoke upon you. For my yoke is easy, my burden is light again. And you will have everlasting, eternal rest. Here's the Lord of the Sabbath. What is He really saying? I am your rest. Come to Me. If you're restless, run to Him in faith, the Lord of the day that is the best, the precursor of the better day, the eternal Sabbath, and rest with God. Let us pray. Our Father in heaven, for these truths we give you thanks. the Lord of the Sabbath. Lord, You provide for our necessities. You look on us in our tears. Ultimately, You've provided for everything we need for life and godliness in and through Jesus Christ. Lord, we pray that as we so often wander through this world, looking in all the wrong places for rest, We pray that you would reignite in us even this morning a turning back to you and your worship with your people on your day. To bask in the glory and power of the cross. Lord, to taste anew again the power of your resurrection. to remember that you are our rest, that there's an eternal Sabbath yet to come, and that yet in this life, you give good and salvation to your believing people. And Lord, we pray that if there are any here who are resisting your Lordship, holding at arm's length, you're saving mercies for forgiveness and life. that all such would find their rest in you. And we pray in Jesus' name. Amen. Look up and receive the blessing of the Triune God. Peace to the brethren and love with faith from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. And grace be with all those who love our Lord Jesus in sincerity. Amen.