Our Sermons

Bible Passage: Mark 2:23-28
Pastor: Pastor Berg
Sermon Date: June 3, 2018

Summer is nearly upon us. Many of us are done with school. Some have just a week to go. The weather is consistently warmer. The mosquitoes are buzzing. And with summer comes sunflower season—at least for me. As I spend the majority of my evenings this month at the ballpark, I enjoy that wonderful baseball tradition of eating sunflower seeds. A handful in my mouth and I’m good to go! But there’s a certain trick to eating sunflower seeds. You see, they come still in the shell. You have to crack open that shell to get the tasty seed inside. But because they’re so small, if you’re not careful, you can focus so much on the shell that you miss enjoying the seed.

The Pharisees were students of God’s law. But in their warped way of thinking, they felt that they could keep the whole law. They even added layers to the law so that they could seemingly be better than others. But for as much as they studied the law, for all of their focus on the law, they only focused on the shell of the law. And because of that, they missed the content on the inside. They missed the precious gospel motivation contained inside the Ten Commandments. They missed the seed.

This morning, we’re going to see Jesus confronted by those same Pharisees concerning the Third Commandment: Remember the Sabbath Day by keeping it holy. But as we’ll see, rather than getting bogged down with the shell, Jesus opens up that commandment to reveal a rich gospel content. Mark tells us: “Once on a Sabbath day, Jesus was passing through the grain fields, and his disciples began to pick heads of grain as they walked along. The Pharisees said to him, “Look, why are they doing what is not lawful on the Sabbath day?”

This is not the first time, nor the only time, that we see the Pharisees accusing someone of breaking the Sabbath. God’s command for the Sabbath was clear. It was to be a day of rest. People weren’t supposed to work. You were supposed to take care of all your cooking and gathering the day before to make sure you had enough for the Sabbath. So, at first glance it may seem as if the Pharisees had a point. Gathering grain, reaping, harvesting would all be violations of the Sabbath. One could argue the disciples were “working” as they walked through the grain fields. And according to the extra laws the Pharisees had added to the Sabbath, they were! How would Jesus get out of this one?

He replied to them, “Have you never read what David did when he was in need and hungry (he and his companions)? He entered the house of God in the time of Abiathar the high priest and ate the Bread of the Presence, which is not lawful for anyone to eat, except for the priests. He also gave some to his companions.” Then Jesus said to them, “The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath. So the Son of Man is the Lord even of the Sabbath.”

Jesus refers to a story those Pharisees would have known well; a story we just so happened to read in our first lesson this morning. David and his men were fleeing from King Saul, who was trying to kill David. They came to Nob, where a priest called Ahimelech or Abiathar—two names for the same person, much like Simon and Peter—was serving. David and his men were hungry and in need. The only food available was the show bread, the bread that was baked daily to be in the tabernacle, the bread that was supposed to be only for the priests to eat. That was the command of God. Yet, in those dire circumstances, the spirit of love overruled the letter of the law. Something greater was at stake than just a matter of outward regulations. So Abiathar gave them the bread. The principle was clear; in the case of necessity, above all, love is the fulfillment of the law. Jesus applies this same truth to what his disciples were doing. They weren’t out working, trying to make money, trying to defy what God had said. They were in need. They were hungry. As they walked, they grabbed a few heads of grain and crushed them and ate them. In their need, they ate.

All of this leads to Jesus’ main point, “The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath. So the Son of Man is Lord even of the Sabbath.” You know how the age old argument goes, right? Which came first, the chicken or the egg? For the believer in creation, the answer is easy—it’s the chicken. And when it comes to the Sabbath, the same is true. Man was created first. God made the Sabbath for man. It was made for his benefit. That Sabbath regulations were not created for God’s benefit, but for man’s benefit. The Sabbath was never meant to burden man. It was created for his benefit.

God gave the Third Commandment as a way for man to receive rest, both physically and spiritually. All you work-a-holics out there know how easy it is not to take time to rest. You know the negative effects that can have on your body, on your state of mind. God, with the shell of the law, provided the wonderful seed of rest with this command. But even more importantly, God provided an opportunity for spiritual rest. God provided a way for the soul to find rest, rest that is only found in God’s Word.

When it comes to the commands of God, far too often we get caught up in the shell and we miss the seed. We get caught up in the externals and miss the content! Who of us hasn’t felt that the Ten Commandments were burdensome? I know I have! Who of us hasn’t had others say that all those rules and regulations that God gives take the fun out of life? When we feel that way, when we look at the commands of God that way, we’re focusing on the shell, not the content. That’s exactly what the Pharisees had done! The Pharisees had turned rest into work. They had focused so much on the shell, on the command, on trying to earn their way into heaven; they missed the whole point of the command. They missed the seed. However, when we peel away the shell, we find the great love and benefit God intended for us in his commands! Specifically in this Third Commandment, when we peel away the shell, we find true rest in Christ.

Jesus and his work for us are the true fulfillment of the Third Commandment, of the Sabbath. It’s only through the forgiveness of sins that Jesus won for us through his life and death that we can have true rest for our souls. That’s why God established this command in the first place. Through the shell of the law, through the forbidding of work, God was pointing people to the rest he would provide through the promised Savior. And that’s why, even in the Old Testament, the gift of peace and rest was the cornerstone and the connecting thread of this commandment. God intended the Sabbath observance to benefit his people spiritually—not by slavish observance of the letter of the law, but by offering the believer a special opportunity to worship, to study God’s Word, and to meditate on his plan of salvation. God intended the Sabbath to be a regular opportunity for man to learn of God’s way of salvation as well as God’s will for his earthly life. He did not intend it as a legalistic requirement that man would have to meet in order to save himself. That’s why the details of the ceremonial law could be violated in order for the spirit of the law to be kept, in order to show love for God by showing love for our neighbor. That’s what Abiathar did by giving David and his men the show bread. God gives this command for our benefit.. Our obedience to it benefits our neighbor and us, but not God. God doesn’t benefit from our obedience. Man wasn’t made for the Sabbath. The Sabbath was made for man!

And even though Jesus has fulfilled the Sabbath regulations by his perfect life, the Sabbath principles remain for our benefit. That’s why in the New Testament, the Sabbath rest we enjoy, that we practice as we worship our God is primarily a worship of receiving, not doing! Our rest comes from receiving what Christ has done for us through Word and Sacrament!

God commands us to worship him. In many places in the Scriptures, including the Third Commandment, we are commanded to worship God, to gather together around his Word and Sacraments. And if that’s what we focus on when we think about worship, if we’re focused on the command, we’re focusing on the shell. If we think that we’re somehow doing God a favor by worshiping him, we’re focusing on the shell and missing the seed. However, if we can get past the shell, we realize that God’s command to worship him doesn’t benefit him. It benefits us! The seed of the Third Commandment is the opportunity to be served by God through his Word and Sacraments. It’s the opportunity to benefit from the work of the Holy Spirit through those means of grace. It’s benefit of having our faith strengthened, of finding true peace and rest in the forgiveness of sins, of encouraging and serving one another. That’s the gospel content! That’s what God intends for us to enjoy.

Unlike sunflower seed season, the opportunity to enjoy the seed of the gospel never takes a break. It’s always there for us. My prayer for you is that you take advantage of what God is giving you. Even in this busy summer season, take advantage of the opportunity to be blessed by God through his Sabbath. But don’t focus on the shell. Don’t get bogged down in the command. Peel away the shell and find the tasty seed of forgiveness and peace and true and lasting rest. May God grant all of us that Sabbath rest for Jesus’ sake. Amen