Bible Talks - Sunday Night Church
Series: Committed to the King · Talk No. 2
King of the Sabbath
Sunday, 13 November 2005
Matthew 11:25-12:15 ESV or NIV
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1. My God and Your God
Many of you will know of Leigh Hatcher, and some of you will know that he published a book earlier this year about his experience of CFS, and in particular, how his relationship with God bought him through that time.
As part of his response to the tons of emails he got when the book was released, I helped Leigh set up a web-based forum, aimed at providing peer support and encouragement for people struggling with CFS. As part of that forum, there is a topic area called ‘faith’. And this week there has been some interesting discussion going on about the gospel. In particular, I’ve been engaging with one person on the forum who says things like this: “Having said that, my belief in "my" God is quite different to your belief in "your" God, where you say that He doesn't see good in any one except Christ. I have interpreted the Bible from a different angle - God doesn't own everything in the world because there is a part of the world that belongs to the Devil, and there is often battles raging between God and the Devil.” And “Speaking just of the NT…it was written by men generally after the stories had been passed from generation to generation by word of mouth, and the interpretation had got a bit lost along the way. Even the Gospel of St John was written by at least 2 individuals and with a long period of time separating them…So you can’t really trust it”
Not an unusual point of view in our culture, but one that illustrates our passage from last week really well: the approach that really doesn’t want to discover the truth, but is far more comfortable making Jesus and God fit their personal idea of what they want God to be like.
At the end of last week’s passage, we read the terrible words of judgement on the cities of Chorazin and Bethsaida because they had chosen to ignore the revelation of God in Jesus Christ. They didn’t want to know the truth, and would rather go on with life in their own comfortable groove, ignoring the consequences that Jesus speaks of..
2. Jesus, King of… the meek
So, that begs the question: If the revealing of God in Jesus has been so thoroughly rejected, does it mean that God’s purpose to save some people had failed?
No. In fact, the opposite, v25 shows how Jesus went on to thank his father that for hiding those things from the clever and smart people, and instead for revealing them to little children (v25,26).
Notice how closely the revealing work of God the Father linked with the revealing work of Jesus, the Son. It’s so close, that Jesus can say: “… no one knows the Father except the Son and those to whom the Son chooses to reveal him.” (v27)
There are three quick things we can learn from that statement:
A. Regardless of how John the Baptist may have temporarily doubted him, and no matter how the population at large failed to repent, Jesus saw himself as the supreme revealer of God the Father, so it’s no surprise for him to say “… no one knows the Son except the Father” (v27) But it is absolutely amazing that “… no one knows the Father except the Son and those to whom the Son chooses to reveal him.”. Because a claim like that means that there is no middle ground: Either Jesus is the only way we can know God the Father, or he was a raving loony!
If the first option is true, we must bow to him, acknowledge his right to be Lord over us, and delight in his truth and in the knowledge of God that only he can provide!
But if the latter is true, then we can ignore him, and forget the nonsense about him being a ‘good man’ or as one way to God amongst many.
Another contributor on the forum on Leigh Hatchers’ web site said this in response to a great post about Jesus from another Christian “Jesus made great decisions in his life. He was a great man, whom we should all regard as a role model. But I don’t see why we have to treat him as God ”
But if we take Jesus at his word here, there’s no room for the Good-Moral-Teacher
Jesus who lets people into heaven if they are good enough.
What are some other kinds of Jesus that you have heard about that conflict with the claims in these verses?
COVER:
The Ecclesiastical Jesus. Pro Hart, the great Aussie painter once painted a picture showing people tearing a church apart vainly looking for God.
Many Australians today associate the name Jesus primarily with ceremony, rites, rituals and the visible trappings of great church buildings.
There is the Give-me-want-I-want-in-life
Jesus.
The give me lots of money and possessions Jesus. With this Jesus you simply place your order and the “consumer society God” will fill it. The 10 commandments become the 10 suggestions, and God revolves around us rather than vice versa.
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Let’s be very clear: we either take Jesus at his word in these verses (and in other places), or we just forget the whole thing, pack up, go home and watch TV. There is no middle ground.
B.. The second thing we can learn from these few verses are that these statements show there is two sides to the revelation about God that Jesus brings.
1. The simple fact that Jesus was there, in person, in the flesh. He exercised his ministry of preaching and teaching as a matter of historical record. Even the most cynical of non-Christian historians accepts the fact of Jesus’ life and ministry.
2. But that fact doesn’t mean that everyone understands or perceives it in that way. It’s clear from what we have read so far that something has to happen in a person’s own mind and heart that enables them to recognise who Jesus was, so that they can then come to know the Father.
That is exactly the case with two people on the forum I’ve quoted. They by and large acknowledge the fact of Jesus’ life and what he did and taught, but they don’t see him as the Son of God.
Trying to share the gospel with people like this is very frustrating, but it brings home the truth that something has to happen people’s heads and hearts before they can see Jesus as who he really is.
C. The third thing to understand from these verses is this: For those who are in the group who have had that change in their minds and hearts and who do see Jesus for who he is, they are the ‘children’ of v25.
That is, they are not the ‘worldly wise’ and ‘learned’ people – the self-sufficient and the self-important. But rather the meek, those who recognise their spiritual poverty and those who hunger to be taught by God.
This connects back to last weeks passage where we see that the religious leaders had their pre-defined ideas of what the Messiah would be like and what he would do when he came – like kick the Romans out of town, set Israel up as the boss country, and of course, make those religious leaders even more powerful and wealthy.
Those kind of expectations were likely to miss qualities like righteousness, justice, mercy, forgiveness of sin, etc that the O.T. promised would feature when the Messiah showed up.
So when Jesus favoured the weak, the burdened and the despised people of his day, and didn’t kick the Romans out, they were more than a little let down.
But this was more than just an intellectual misunderstanding. From Jesus’ perspective it was a major [moral] failing of the religious leaders. They failed to value Messiah-values like justice and forgiveness in their own lives, and so they didn’t value it in Jesus.
And so Jesus’ invitation in v28-30 is to the broken and burdened. He wasn’t a powerful Lord who ruthlessly crushed all opposition. He was the one who sought the good of others, who promised rest for their souls (v29). The yoke he promised wasn’t the yolk of the law, but of discipleship to him. “Learn from me” he says, not as in ‘train from my experience’ so much as ‘learn from all that I alone can show you’.
And that yolk is easy, and it’s light – a deliberate comparison with the burden that the Jewish Law placed on people…
3. Jesus king of… the Sabbath
Which is probably why Matthew then moves on to record some encounters that Jesus had with the Law. Encounters that clarify for us his attitude and concerns with the law.
12:1-14 provide two such encounters, and the contrast between the ‘yoke’ that Jesus speaks of and that of the Pharisees becomes clearer.
That contrast is found in the heavy insistence of submission to the Pharisees version of the O.T. law compared to the relief of Jesus’ compassionate authority as the gentle revealer of God that the O.T. really point to.
If you have never read up about the Pharisee’ approach to keeping the O.T. law, you might be surprised at how silly it all got.
They set up an amazingly complex web of rules and regulations that were meant to govern virtually every aspect of a Jewish person’s life. These rules went far beyond the scope and the intention of the O.T. law. For example, when it came to the Sabbath, the O.T. law as given to Moses on Mt Sinai as part of the ten commandments says: “Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy. Six days you shall labour, and do all your work, but the seventh day is a Sabbath to the Lord your God. On it you shall not do any work, you, or your son, or your daughter, your male servant, or your female servant, or your livestock, or the sojourner who is within your gates. For in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them, and rested the seventh day. Therefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy.” Exodus 20:8-11 ESV
It’s very clear in it’s intent.
The Sabbath was meant to serve the people, to make sure that everyone had one day in seven off work. It meant that Jewish employers couldn’t force their employees – even slaves – to work seven days a week. It made good social sense, and it made good sense in the context of the people’s relationship with God, as it gave everyone the opportunity to meet together as God’s people.
But the Pharisees – working on the premise that God really wanted blind obedience to hard rules and regulations, rather than a willing and obedient heart, they set up 39 separate categories of work prohibited on the Sabbath!
And reaping (gathering grain) was one of them – hence the clash with Jesus here in 12:2.
You know, if that had been you or I, my guess is we would have bailed up the nearest Pharisee, told him what a dumb thing it was to add all these rules to the O.T., and then take him through an accelerated version of Two Ways To live!
4. Jesus and the Pharisees.
But Jesus used a different tack, and his answer tells us a great deal.
First. He immediately goes to the exception that the great King David was prepared to make to the formal law. When he was desperate and hungry and he and his men ate some of the consecrated bread from the Tabernacle (the forerunner to the Temple). Bread that should have only been eaten by the priests.
He’s not just saying that rules often have exceptions, but was pointing out that the Pharisees whole approach to the law was wrong, and couldn’t be supported by Scripture.
[Second. Jesus pointed out that not all laws operate on the same level – the Pharisees themselves technically broke the law when they worked in the Temple on the Sabbath. But, of course, they had made special Temple laws that took precedence over the ‘normal’ laws governing that. Now he says “one greater than the Temple is here”, implying that his own authority is over and above the Temple laws and the Sabbath laws.]
Third. Jesus insisted not only on the innocence of his disciples but quotes from the very Scriptures that the Pharisees would use against him. From Hosea 6:6 which says: “For I desire mercy, not sacrifice, and acknowledgment of God rather than burnt offerings.” Which highlights why the Pharisees should be accused of condemning the innocent – they’ve totally misread the very heart of their own Scriptures! The disciples were innocent simply because the Son of Man is King of the Sabbath. The one greater than the Temple was here!
The second example of Sabbath law in the passage reinforces the poor understanding of the Pharisees again:
If their own rules allowed a man to rescue a sheep on the Sabbath, should Jesus not do good to a man on the Sabbath – since a man is so much more valuable than a sheep?
The miracle itself confirms Jesus’ judgment on the whole matter, but of course his opponents were so blind, that the confrontation only deepened their opposition and helped to bring about the conspiracy that would ultimately lead Jesus to the cross.
5. You and the Sabbath
So what does all this say to us?
Seems to me there are several things we can take on board.
1. We tend to snigger at the poor old Pharisee’s and tut-tut about how they could possibly get things so wrong. But perhaps we should pause and take stock.
We rightly criticise the excessive legalism and lack of compassion that the teachers of the law showed to the people. The people whom they should have been nurturing and encouraging in their relationship with God. But there is evidence of those negative qualities in our own Christian community.
In enjoying the freedom from legalism that Jesus brings, we have perhaps failed to allow our minds and hearts to be truly transformed by Jesus and His Spirit. So we mock a legalistic approach to the Sabbath (for example), and happily allow what was commonly regarded as the Christian Sabbath – Sunday – to become just another day in the week.
But in doing that, I would suggest that we have also thrown out much of the original intention of the Sabbath – to ensure good rest and time with family, and to encourage community time as God’s people. And if we are doing that, then we are little better than the Pharisees!
I wonder how many of us take seriously the God-given value of a Sabbath? Of the real, long-term value of significant time for parents to spend with children, of whole families to engage together.
Have we really thought through the significance in the life of God’s people, of a regular, consistent gathering together to sit under God? It’s clear that lots of people don’t, because you talk to almost any church leader in Sydney about the size of their church, and you will get two figures: the number of people in the church directory, and the number, on average, present on a Sunday. Often, the second number is closer to half of the first. For many Christians, church together on a Sunday is becoming more and more optional.
Now we can and probably should get creative and work out ways around that, but the point remains, are you sloppy in your thinking and your practise of the Sabbath? Are you allowing a distain for the law and a love affair with our culture to allow you to drift from God’s plan for you?
If so, what will you do about it?
