Mark 2:23–3:6 — Lord of the Sabbath

This sermon is from Mark chapter 2 verse 23 through chapter 3 verse 6. It is

Mark 2:23

entitled "Lord of the Sabbath" and it was delivered to Ecclesia churches on June 12th,

2025. So today we'll be in a passage that bridges two chapters in the gospel of Mark

from Mark chapter 2 verse 23 through chapter 3 verse 6. And I've mentioned

Mark 2:23

this before that chapters and verses are helpful for finding your way around

Scripture, but neither they nor the headings in your Bible are inspired by

God. The only division that the original reader had was the beginning and the end

of the book. So this is something that translators have added in to help us

navigate what's happening in what section of Scripture, generally speaking.

But the original reader would have had to rely on things like location changes,

themes being discussed, similarities and comparisons, words that triggered them to

know that the story was moving on. In short, they would have needed to pay

attention to the text, which is hopefully what we're doing together now. A few

things that we've learned about Mark as a writer so far is that he's a man of

comparatively few words to his contemporaries, and he doesn't waste a

single one. Everything from the words he uses, the Old Testament references that

he makes, the stories that he chooses to put together are curated by Mark,

inspired by the Holy Spirit, to show us something specific. This is one thing

that distinguishes a gospel account from a biography. So Mark has a specific aim

in writing, and he wants his audience to understand specific things about Jesus

and his mission of salvation. And so while we have one passage at the end of

chapter 2 and then one at the beginning of chapter 3, if we take those markings

out for a moment, we see two passages side by side talking about the Sabbath. In

the first scene in Mark 2, 23 through 28, the conflict arises from the actions of

Jesus' disciples on the Sabbath. They're eating grain from the side of the field.

In the second passage, Mark 3, 1 through 6, the conflict targets Jesus directly

for his own actions on the Sabbath. He's being set up basically. So let's begin by

reading the first half together. This is Mark chapter 2, beginning with verse 23.

Mark 2 · chapter mention

"One Sabbath he was going through the grain fields, and as they made their way,

his disciples began to pluck heads of grain. And the Pharisees were saying to

him, 'Look, why are they doing what is not lawful on the Sabbath?' And he said to

them, 'Have you never read what David did when he was in need and was hungry? He

and those who were with him. How he entered the house of God in the time of

Abbaethar the high priest and ate the bread of the presence, which it is not

lawful for any but the priests to eat, and also gave it to those who were with

him. And he said to them, 'The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath. So

the Son of Man is Lord even of the Sabbath.'" These stories are part of one

larger sequence of conflicts that Jesus has had primarily with the Pharisees,

having to do with his authority to do everything from forgiving sin to keeping

company with sinners to healing on the Sabbath. And the key statement that we'll

talk about is this thing Jesus says right in the middle at the end of this

passage here in verse 28, "That the Son of Man is Lord even of the Sabbath." What

does it mean that the Sabbath belongs to God? And how is it part of his posture

toward us that is one of grace and mercy? What do these conversations about the

Sabbath show us about the bigger picture in which Jesus fulfills the law and

brings a new covenant to all who will follow him? So I'm excited for us to see

how Jesus does not dismiss the Sabbath but instead fulfills it, offering us a

kind of rest that goes beyond just a day off. Just like the last passage in which

a question about fasting was introduced, there's something bigger than the Sabbath

going on in this one. But to get to that, we need to understand the Sabbath. And

particularly, we need to know what God's original intent was for it, what He

commanded for the observance or practice of it, and what changes the Jews had made

by adding their own expectations by the time we get to Jesus' day. So let's get

to it. First, what is the Sabbath? There were two practices that separated the

Jews from every other nation and were signs of their covenant relationship

with God. The first was circumcision, which we talked extensively about in our

series on Galatians. The second was the observance of the Sabbath holy day.

Every week, from sundown on Friday to sun up on Saturday, they were commanded to

rest as a community from work and worship God. So where did it come from? Where

did this idea come from? Well, the laws given to Israel came into play after

they leave Egypt with Moses. But Sabbath actually comes from something that

God did when the world was only six days old. Let's take a quick look at Genesis

Genesis 2:2

2 verses 2 and 3. It says, "And on the seventh day, God finished His work that He

had done, and He rested on the seventh day from all His work that He had done. So

God blessed the seventh day and made it holy, because on it, God rested from all

His work that He had done in creation." So a helpful clarification here is around

the idea of God resting. We typically rest when we're tired, but that's

obviously not why the all-powerful God of the universe rests. So don't walk away

from that passage thinking, "Even God needs to rest sometimes," because doing

that is making God in your own image instead of understanding Him as He is.

We've often talked about preaching through Genesis, but just haven't gotten

there yet, and so we'll kind of dive in just a little bit here. What we need to

know about the idea of God resting is that from an ancient context, the people

to whom Genesis was written, the idea being communicated here is not that God

is tired, but that He is transitioning from establishing all of creation to now

ruling and reigning over it. This idea of God as a deity resting is more of an

entrance into ruling and reigning than it is the way that we would understand we

need rest. So we don't have time to get into a word study in Genesis here, but

God resting is better understood as He's seated on the throne and He's reigning

over all that He has established. So fast forward to the law being given through

Moses. Take that idea forward to the commandment that we're given to honor

the Sabbath. This is given to the Jewish people as they come out of Egypt, and

this is what he says. He says, "Remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy. Six days

you shall labor 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 on the seventh day. Therefore the Lord blessed

the Sabbath day and made it holy." So this isn't just a holiday, but it's a

weekly rhythm commanded by God for His set-apart people in which they spend six

days working hard, doing all the work they needed to do, the planting, the raising,

the establishing, the building, but on the seventh day they were to take a step

back and recognize that it was God who ruled and reigned. It was God who provided

for them. It was God who was their sufficiency, because doing that, recognizing

God for who He is, causes us to worship Him. Sounds pretty good, right? Heading into

the first day of the week rested and with a mindset that God provides as you

dig in wholeheartedly to the next six days of work. That sounds good, so what

happened? Well, people take this good thing that God has given them and they

tried to remake it in their own image. The Jewish leaders had since decided that

they could improve upon God's law by adding to it with some helpful little

regulations. Instead of "don't do your work on the Sabbath," which is what God

commanded, they created in place of that one law 39 classes of work that were

prohibited, along with strict rules like "don't take more than 1,999 steps on the

Sabbath day," because more than that could be considered a journey and that's

work. Don't tie knots, so I guess hopefully they didn't have shoes that

needed tied. You could only write one letter more than that was unnecessary.

This concept that it came back to was that you really shouldn't do anything

unnecessary. This comes up in our second story, but it was completely up to the

lawmakers to decide what was and wasn't necessary. So this is the world that

Jesus and his disciples walk on this Sabbath day, and the disciples have the

audacity to pluck a few heads of grain from the edge of the field as they walk

through for a kind of snack on the go. The Pharisees see this and basically blow

their lawbreaker whistles and they go running or more likely walking, counting

their steps as they went probably, to tattle on them to their rabbi Jesus.

Their accusation is that the disciples are breaking the law. They're reaping,

no reaping on the Sabbath. That's number 27 on the list of 39 prohibited

classes of work. It seems ridiculous, but this is the world that they're

living in. Honestly, the first question I had when reading this passage is, why

was this the accusation? Why not the far more obvious walking through the fields

on the Sabbath? They've got to be over 2,000 steps at this point in their journey,

right? It has to classify as a journey, which means they're breaking that rule

far more clearly. But where are the Pharisees? The Pharisees are walking

right along beside them because they have to follow these guys and their

troublesome rabbi to keep an eye on them. They couldn't make an accusation

that implicated themself. This is hypocrisy 101, right? This is how

hypocrisy works. Instead, they accuse them of reaping. Here's the problem.

What they are doing, plucking grain by hand while passing through a field, is

specifically permitted by Deuteronomy 2325. It was a provision made for

travelers. It was the equivalent of picking a single apple off of a

laden apple tree. It wasn't a huge expense to the person who grew the grain, and it

provided for the traveler to move through the country. Technically, walking was

also allowed on the Sabbath. Law wasn't the issue. It was their regulations

that were the issue. Notice that they consider their regulations the law. They

say the disciples are breaking the law. Suddenly, my rules and my preferences

have become equal to the law of God. The answer that Jesus gives them is, I'll

be honest, something that was really confusing to me at first, because it's

not how I expected Jesus to respond. It's not how I would have responded. I

would have responded with Deuteronomy 23 that what they're doing is allowed by

the law, so back off. I would have responded with Exodus 31 that their

interpretation of the law had added burden that the law didn't require. Then

I would have stomped off with my disciples, loudly chewing on those heads of

grain just despite these hypocritical Pharisees. Clearly, the Lord is still

working on me. The point is my response would have been one to justify myself and

my actions, to prove myself and my friends right. But that's not the heart of the

mission of Jesus, is it? See, Jesus isn't insecure in the way that I am. He knows

who He is and would rather serve these people by showing them the mercy of God

instead. By showing them who He is, and just like with His response to the

question about fasting in the last passage, He's gonna answer them with more

than they bargained for. Jesus responds with this story from 1 Samuel 21

1 Samuel 21:1–6

verses 1 through 6, in which David has been chosen as the Lord's anointed to be

the next king of Israel, but he is running from king Saul with his men. In

this account, David asks for food from the priest at Knob, but the only bread

that's available is the bread of the presence. This would have been the 12

loaves of bread that represented the 12 tribes of Israel, that were placed in the

tabernacle and later in the temple, each Sabbath, and it was only to be eaten by

the priests when the new bread was brought in. However, David and his men are

starving, and the priest has mercy on them and gives them this bread. So while,

yes, this bread wasn't for them, the priest, the representative of God, has

mercy on them and feeds them anyway. At first glance, this is such a weird story

to use, but Jesus is using it very specifically to show the Pharisees and

us two things. First, He says, "The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the

Sabbath." They had misunderstood the purpose of the Sabbath entirely. It wasn't

to give them a restrictive rule that would make them more holy. It was to give

them a way to celebrate the provision of God. The Sabbath is a gift to mankind, a

day in which they were told to rest in the fact that their God ruled and reigned

and was merciful and gracious in providing for them. That was the first

thing that Jesus establishes. The second thing, though, that he's doing is he's

making a connection between himself and King David. If David was the Messianic

King, the one who was pointing forward to the Messiah, from whose line would come

the Messiah, Jesus, then Jesus is more than hinting at this because he declares

that he is something better than even the revered King David of old. He says, "So the

Son of Man is Lord even of the Sabbath." The Son of Man, a title referring to

himself, is Lord or has claim over the Sabbath. This is perhaps the clearest

claim yet that Jesus makes about himself that he's more than just a teacher and in

this case even more than a king. He is the King of Kings who first instituted

this day of rest after six days of creation, the one to whom the Sabbath

belongs. Jesus is the fulfillment of the Sabbath. He is the rest that they have

all been looking for. And so let's just take a moment here to recognize the

desire and ability of Jesus to provide that for us. Let me put it this way. If

King David was able to provide food for his men thanks to the merciful exception

made by the priest, how much greater is the provision of the one who is both the

King of Kings and the great High Priest for his people. In all of the ways that

you are insufficient, that you are not enough, all of the ways that you are

weary and heavy laden, the sin that is too much to bear, the unfair expectations

that have been placed on you, the busyness that you can't seem to get away

from. In all of those places and more, Jesus offers us rest when we come to him.

He offers us a rest and a peace that we cannot manufacture or buy and the best

part is he offers it freely as a gift. This is the way that Jesus fulfills and

offers us an even more complete Sabbath rest. We find our rest in Jesus and in

Jesus alone. So as we move on to the next text, I don't know how that message was

received by these folks who were accusing Jesus' disciples in the field, but

based on their response shortly after this in the synagogue, I think we can

assume that they didn't receive it well. In this second story on what was

probably a different Sabbath but not long afterwards, it says again he entered

the synagogue, Jesus goes into the synagogue on a Sabbath where the

Pharisees are basically waiting for him. So let's go ahead and read Mark 3 1

through 6 now. Again he entered the synagogue and a man was there with a

withered hand and they watched Jesus to see whether he would heal him on the

Sabbath so that they might accuse him and he said to the man with the withered

hand, "Come here." And he said to them, "Is it lawful on the Sabbath to do good or

to do harm, to save life or to kill?" But they were silent and he looked around at

them with anger, grieved at their hardness of heart and said to the man,

"Stretch out your hand." He stretched it out and his hand was restored. The

Pharisees went out and immediately held counsel with the Herodians against him

how to destroy him. So you can see the progression over the last five stories

where the religious leaders go from being where Jesus was to following him

around to accusing him and now they're lying in wait ready to accuse him again.

The tense of the word "watched" here of that verb implies an ongoing waiting. Like

they're sitting on the edge of their seats, they can't wait to see what Jesus

is going to do. Why? Because they know this man with the withered hand is there

and they know enough from following Jesus that Jesus has the ability to heal

him. But they're not hanging in anticipation to glorify God at this

man's healing. They're waiting to accuse Jesus of breaking the regulations again.

So when it comes to healing on the Sabbath, there was not a law that

forbade Jesus from miraculously healing on the Sabbath because nobody could do

that but Jesus. But there were regulations that were against offering

any more than life-saving aid. So for example, if you had a cut, they could

bind up the cut so you didn't bleed out but they couldn't clean it and stitch

it up until after the Sabbath was over. If you broke a bone, you'd have to wait

until Sunday to have your arm set in a cast. But instead, Jesus calls this man

up front and in what was probably unnerving for the Pharisees, out of

everyone in the room, Jesus turns and looks at them and asks about which is

lawful, the thing that they've been slinging around this whole time. He asks

if it's lawful to do good or harm, to save a life or to kill. See, Jesus knows

exactly why they're watching and exactly what they are about to plot against

him to do. And he's using their own logic against them, citing their love of the

law. They are here to do harm and plot to kill him and he is there to do good and

give his life as a ransom for many. The contrast could not be more clear and to

this question, they have nothing to say. This is the only time in Mark where

Jesus is described as being angry. In other places, he will be frustrated, he

will be full of pity, even indignant with his disciples later on. But only here

is he angry. Why? It is the silence of the Pharisees that betrays something far

worse happening internally. Their hearts are hard. These are the people who should

understand the law of God the best. These were the people who were trying to

guide the people back to being a holy and set-apart people and yet they have no

concept of the mercy of the God they claim to serve. So this passage ends with

Jesus doing good and healing the man's hand without another word to them and

they leave to plot his destruction, ironically on the Sabbath, with the

Herodians who are a secular political group, basically a mob in their day, just

in case you needed any more evidence of their hypocrisy. They didn't practice

what they preached and they had no love for the mercy of God. They had an

opportunity to see the mercy of God on display through a miraculous healing of

a man who would never be healed otherwise and they would choose to

withhold that healing in order to maintain their regulations. They had

entirely missed the heart of God for the Sabbath and consequently they'd missed

the heart of God for his people who he loves. They had missed what the prophet

Micah said about how the Lord requires that we do justice, love mercy, and walk

humbly with God. Here God was in the flesh to offer them the kind of rest

that they had been waiting for with mercy to heal the broken and they were so

blinded by their self-righteous hypocrisy that they couldn't even see him. I

really struggled with this passage to be perfectly honest. At first I thought

that it was because of the interweaving of all of these Old Testament laws and

then you add in this seeming random Old Testament story. All of the elements,

even though they had the Sabbath connection, were just kind of hard to

work out. First, why Jesus said and did what he did and second, why is Mark

telling it in this order with this emphasis? I thought that it was a text

problem but after I sorted through my questions I think I actually started to

see that I wasn't just struggling with understanding the passage. I was

struggling with the implication of it for me. Here I am reading and writing and

preaching about how Jesus offers us rest, the fulfillment of the Sabbath and

the person of Christ and I'm just feeling tired. More than just a tired that

stems from physical work and mental focus and emotional availability, I'm

talking about a tired that seems to go right down to my core. It's a tired that

I can only identify as the kind that you find at the end of yourself when you

realize that you are insufficient in your own strength. You get to this point

where you realize that you are not smart enough to solve all of the problems, you

are not powerful enough to erase all of the hurt and you are not kind enough to

bear perfectly with everyone in patience. I can't be the only one who feels

this way because we're all living in a similar place, in a similar moment, in

time. And so as we come away from this text, maybe we can start from a place of

honesty. I know I had to, that we are each in need of the rest that only Jesus

offers in order to show the mercy of God to anyone at all, even ourselves. The

purpose of establishing the Sabbath was to teach His people to rest in His care

and provision. It meant to give us physical rest, but also it gave us a

right perspective of who He is. We are no longer under this old covenant of

Jewish laws, right, requiring us to observe certain rituals on a Saturday.

But the principle and the purpose of the Sabbath remains. Our need for Sabbath, for

rest, remains. Remember, Jesus didn't come to abolish the law, but to fulfill it,

which means that now in Jesus we experience even more fully the rest that

comes from the provision of God when we trust in Him. So practically, here are

some rhythms that we keep in order to do that well. This is things that we do as a

church. We meet together on Sundays and often on Thursdays. We do this to turn

our attention to Jesus together, remembering who He is and what He's done.

This causes us to respond with gratitude to Him. We call that worship, a right

posture toward God, responding to Him truly for who He is. We aren't legalistically

bound to do this on a Sunday. Sunday is just the day that the church family has

traditionally met since the first century. And they picked it because it's the

day that Jesus rose from the dead. It seemed like a good day to celebrate the

rest of God. While we aren't also legalistically bound to a certain day,

the principle of having a day of rest from your regular work and activities is

vitally important to us. It is particularly important for families

because it sets the example that the world doesn't rise and fall on my work, on

our activities, on anything else. Running seven days a week might be a norm that

you have grown accustomed to, but it is not healthy by God's standards. And it

can lead to a form of idolatry in which you think the world rests on your

shoulders. And I say this with love because I have some work to do in this

area in particular. Every passage leading up to this one has shown us that Jesus

and the way he invites us to are better than any kind of substitute. And this is

particularly the case with the rest that Jesus offers to us. Not just rest for

our bodies, but rest for our souls. And it is something that is freely offered to

us when we put our trust in his provision and place ourselves in his care.

Ecclesia is a church of house churches gathering weekly in Council Bluffs, Iowa

and in homes throughout the week. We are a Bible-centered church focused on

preaching from Scripture and making disciples of Jesus. You can learn more

about our statement of faith and contact the pastor by visiting

EcclesiaChurches.org