Last week we looked at Jesus’ talk about judgement and rest. He told us that judgement is coming, but He followed that up and said, “Come to Me, all you who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.” He said that He will give us rest for our very souls and that is what we all NEED. Wherever we come from, whatever we’ve done, whatever has been done to us, whatever we are going through right now … we can lay it all down at the feet of Jesus. And the reality is, that He may not take it all away, but in Christ, in His salvation, in His rest, in that place, all of the things of this world become easier to deal with when we have this undercurrent of hope in greater things that we have found in Jesus.
There’s a passage in 2 Corinthians 4:16-18 that says:
16 That is why we never give up. Though our bodies are dying, our spirits are being renewed every day. 17 For our present troubles are small and won’t last very long. Yet they produce for us a glory that vastly outweighs them and will last forever! 18 So we don’t look at the troubles we can see now; rather, we fix our gaze on things that cannot be seen. For the things we see now will soon be gone (which is our current issues), but the things we cannot see will last forever. (which are the things of God)
All of the things and all of the troubles of right now won’t be here all that long compared to the things of the Lord, and His promises, and His Kingdom, which will last forever. That’s why we talked about laying all of these things down before Him, because the GOD OF FOREVER is so much more capable of dealing with our present then we are.
That’s where we came from last week, but today let’s get going into Matthew chapter 12.
Read Matthew 12:1-14
So, this passage talks quite a bit about the Sabbath. And the Sabbath itself isn’t our main point for today, but it’s a big part of this passage, so I want to make sure that we understand a little bit about what it is.
So, what is the Sabbath? Let’s read Exodus 20.
Read Exodus 20:8-11
This comes right out of the Ten Commandments, and it’s a pretty clear explanation of the Sabbath. The Sabbath looks back to God’s work during creation, that He created all that we see in six days and then on the seventh day He rested. The Sabbath day for the Jewish people was on Saturday, every week, and it happened in light of God’s command to set aside that day for rest, just like He did and because as Exodus said, He blessed that day for that purpose.
But take note of one thing. The sabbath day was made between God and the Israelites, it’s actually never commanded or instructed for us during the New Testament. I definitely don’t think it would be wrong to observe a Sabbath day if you feel led to do that, but it’s not in the instructions for us. This instruction was for the Jewish people, and they took it very seriously. That’s why we are seeing this situation at the beginning of Matthew 12. So, in light of that, let me read verse 1 again.
Read Matthew 12:1
So, on this particular Saturday, Jesus and His disciples were walking through some grainfields. His disciples were hungry, and so they plucked some of the grain to eat. And we would look at that and be like, what’s the big deal? But once again, we’ve got these Pharisees on the scene again throwing accusations around at Jesus and His followers.
Read Matthew 12:2
Man, these guys are everywhere in the last few chapters. Were some of them just hiding in the field waiting for them to pass through? Were they following them from a distance? Obviously, they were close enough to see what was going on and they think they’ve got them this time…for picking some grain on the Sabbath…because they were hungry. They call out to Jesus and tell Him that His disciples are breaking the law. But the problem is that these guys had taken so many of God’s original commands, and there definitely were commands about the Sabbath, but they took God’s commands and stripped God’s heart out of it. They added all sorts of ridiculous rules and regulations to create a culture of self-righteousness, rather than understanding, appreciating, and following God’s heart through His commands.
We’ve talked about some of their crazy additions before, but the list is so long, and a lot of it doesn’t even make any sense. Like I read this one command that was talking about washing or bathing yourself and how you needed to be careful not to splash the water too much, because if you splashed it too much onto the ground and it cleaned the floor on accident, then you would be in sin for the work of cleaning the floor. That’s ridiculous, but this is the kind of stuff that these self-righteous people were coming up with.
And so, they’re coming at Jesus’ disciples with these accusations and what did these guys do? They just picked some grain and made some food. And according to these guys, the work of doing that, was breaking the law of the Sabbath. You know if you stop to think about this, I bet these guys are working harder to spy on Jesus and His disciples, then the disciples were working to just make a little meal to eat. But of course, them being hungry and eating is the big problem here.
But then we see Jesus and He is sitting here by this field, listening to their accusations, and then He challenges them with a biblical example. He gives this example in verse 3 and 4.
Read Matthew 12:3-4
Jesus uses this example of David from the Old Testament, and this comes from 1 Samuel 21. And this is before David was King, this was when King Saul was trying to kill him, because he thought that he was a threat to his position. And during this time, David and some of his men enter this town and find the priest there and David asks the priest for some food to eat. And the priest is like, we don’t have any food here except for the holy bread that had been placed before the Lord inside of the tabernacle. And normally it would be totally against the Law for anyone to eat the bread that had been presented to the Lord. But Jesus uses this example to make a point. The point that He was making, was that God cared more about the people and their need at that moment than He did about the ceremony and the bread that was used in it. The ceremony was important, it honored God, but God was like we can pause the ceremony for a moment so that these people can be loved and cared for.
Jesus uses this example with these guys and in verse 3, He’s like … Have you not read that? Don’t you guys know about that? Don’t you even know the history of your people? And then Jesus steps it up again in verse 5.
Read Matthew 12:5
Jesus uses the example of the priests in the temple, because even on the Sabbath the priests would be preparing the sacrifices and doing their temple duties and Jesus was like, what about those guys? They’re working, like obviously there’s some exceptions here. But the problem is once again that these guys stripped out the heart and reduced God’s law to just nit-picking rules and regulations and that’s not what it’s about. And Jesus is about to set the record straight.
Read Matthew 12:6-8
These people hold the law and also the temple in very high regard. They don’t need to add all their extra junk to it, but these things are incredibly important, and they should be held in very high regard. It’s God’s law and it’s God’s house. But while these things are important, they were missing something even more important that was standing right in front of them.
Jesus says in verse 6, and He’s talking about Himself, but He says that there is someone standing in this place, right now, that is greater than the temple itself. The temple is seen as God’s house, it is seen as holy, as the place where God engages with people on earth. Jesus just said that He is greater than that. To be greater than that, means only one thing, and it means that Jesus is claiming to be God. Only God is going to be greater than God’s house. And then in verse 8, He hammers it home, and says, “For the Son of Man (talking about Himself) is Lord even of the Sabbath”. Like you recognize the Sabbath that God gave to the Israelites and the ceremonial importance that it has, but you are totally missing the one that rules over the Sabbath that is standing right in front of you.
And in the middle of those statements, Jesus said in verse 7:
Read Matthew 12:7
You see back in Matthew 9, right when Jesus was calling Matthew to follow Him, and He was being challenged even then by these same guys. He told them in Matthew 9:13, to “go and learn what this means: I desire mercy and not sacrifice”. And we didn’t deal with it then, because this moment was coming and these same guys are bringing the same types of issues and Jesus is like if you had learned what this means, then you wouldn’t be making these allegations, because these guys are guiltless.
And what this statement means goes back to something we have hit on quite a few times through this book. That God is concerned about the condition and direction of our heart and not just the visible actions. You see, sacrifice is an action, and it’s not at all a bad action, but mercy is a condition of the heart that is then acted out towards others. Jesus isn’t saying that sacrifice is bad, but the point really is that God values the condition of the heart over the action. But the action and the heart are both important and so ultimately, we would want to see the action happen, but happen rooted out of a healthy heart.
Let’s look at a passage together in 1 Corinthians 13
Read 1 Corinthians 13:1-7
You can do all of these seemingly wonderful actions, but without the healthy heart to back them up, without starting from the place of love for others, then the actions don’t mean anything. Our heart has to be right and then we act from that heart.
And if that heart is present, if that love is present, then we should be patient, kind, not envious, not showing off, not prideful, not rude, not self-seeking, not provoked to anger, not thinking evil of others, not rejoicing when others mess up. That’s how someone with that heart is going to carry themselves. I’m not saying that we won’t mess up at times, but those things are going to be in the make-up of our character.
And so, I think about these guys back in Matthew 12, these pharisees. And I don’t think we can say that these guys have been loving, I think they have been envious of Jesus’ influence, they have been prideful, they have showed off, they have been rude, they have been self-seeking, they have been angry, they have been thinking evil of others, they are trying to rejoice when others mess up. And Jesus is just like, if only you guys would get it, if only you understood the matters of the heart. I mean they’ve been doing all of this stuff, through these chapters, and they are convinced that they are oh so holy, but they haven’t even made it to the starting point of understanding Who Jesus is and the heart that He would desire us to have. That’s what Jesus was calling them on right now.
And then just to put an exclamation point on the end of this interaction, let’s read verses 9 through 14.
Read Matthew 12:9-14
We know that Jesus’ disciples didn’t do anything wrong getting a bite to eat when they were hungry on the Sabbath, but there was also a law that people couldn’t be helped or healed unless it was life threatening in that moment on the Sabbath. And so, these same guys, were like, we didn’t get you on that last one, so what about this guy and His hand Jesus? Would it be right for you to do something about it today?
Then Jesus says, SO, if one of your sheep fell in a hole today, you aren’t going to save it and get it out of the hole? Jesus knows that every last one of them would probably get the sheep out, and He’s like a man is worth way more than a sheep and so it’s ok to do the good thing, to do the right thing, on the Sabbath. We need to understand God’s instructions, but with that we absolutely need to understand His heart. We might have things that we have always done a certain way, maybe we have certain traditions that we have stuck to, but if we understand that God’s instruction and God’s heart would lead us a different way, then we absolutely need to go that way. Jesus had presented these guys with that lesson, but they just weren’t getting it.
And so, Jesus and I just wonder if He’s like staring down these pharisees, but during this moment He tells the guy with the withered hand to stretch out his hand and the guy is healed. And maybe Jesus is still locked eyes with these guys, that’s just how I imagine this is going down, but these guys see this and they’re like … THIS GUY’S A PROBLEM, WE NEED TO KILL THIS GUY.
So that’s where our passage ends. The plots have begun to kill Jesus.
And for us as we walk away today, just know that action is important, you can live your life with great intentions, but intentions don’t mean much until they are put to work, but those actions, as important as they are, also don’t mean anything unless they are coming from a heart that is in the right place. So, let’s check our hearts before the Lord, and then let’s follow Him into the action, with a love for God, a love for others, and purposed for the glory of God.