MATTHEW 12:1-8
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 the seventh day. Therefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy. (Exodus 20:8-11; cp. Exodus 31:12-17)
From the founding of our country until today, our government has written, passed, and enforced what are disparagingly called "blue laws,” laws based originally on the Biblical injunction against working on the Sabbath. The first blue law was enacted in the Virginia colony. It required that every citizen attend church on Sunday. Currently, in thirteen states, including Illinois, car dealerships are closed on Sundays. That’s a blue law. Hunting is prohibited on Sundays in Massachusetts, Connecticut, and Pennsylvania. That’s a blue law. Many states prohibit selling alcohol on Sunday before noon (another blue law). The original rationale is that Sunday morning is for attending church, not the tavern. But in most states all the laws you could find in the books even just sixty years ago—laws that banned various business, leisure, and sporting activities on Sunday, such as barbering, clam digging, and even cockfighting—have been repealed. And aren’t we glad? My goodness, what would we all do without the pleasure of a good Sunday afternoon cockfight?
In all seriousness, I bring up blue laws to say that such laws, while ridiculous at times, nevertheless exemplified the conviction not only that the Bible matters, but also that time matters. This sacredness of time was expressed every weekend as the stores closed their doors and the churches opened theirs. And it was epitomized, for example, in the actions of Eric Liddell, the Scottish sprinter who refused to run on a Sunday race during the 1924 Paris Olympic Games. The movie Chariots of Fire is based on his story. It was also epitomized in the courageous decision of the Wright brothers, who saved their historic first flight for Monday morning, even when the weather on Sunday was far more ideal. They wouldn’t fly on Sunday!
For an athlete to give up running for an Olympic gold medal and for two great inventors to risk their lives all because of their shared conviction about the sacredness of a day of the week is difficult for us to understand, for in our fast-paced society the concept of sacred time has long been consumed by consumerism.
Most of us are indifferent toward time, especially toward setting aside one day a week and viewing it is holy, set apart from the rest in order to rest. And such indifference, of course, is to our disadvantage in many ways. But concerning our text, this is to our disadvantage as we try to understand why the Pharisees were so upset by the actions of Christ’s disciples. It may require some deep thinking and creative re-imagining for us to get into the minds of the typical ancient Jew.
So, with your Bible open, picture again the scene set in 12:1. It is a happy Saturday morning in early spring. Jesus, his disciples, and the entourage following him get up at dawn and start into the city, heading for the synagogue. There they will catch the first service. Christ’s disciples are from this region, so they lead the way, walking a few paces ahead of Jesus, who apparently (at least this is how I envision this scene) is striding side by side with the Pharisees. As they walk, the disciples decide to partake of the original breakfast of champions, so they grab a few grains and begin to nibble.
In their minds what they are doing is completely innocent and legal, for according to Leviticus 19:9 and Deuteronomy 23:25 a farmer is to leave the edges of his fields unharvested so some of the crops could be picked by the poor or by travelers. Just as walking on a sidewalk in our culture is not trespassing on private property, in their culture picking heads of grain at the edge of a field was not considered stealing. Stealing is not the issue.
The Pharisees also knew this law. After all they were experts in the Law of Moses. So when they made their statement to Jesus, “Look, your disciples are doing what is not lawful to do on the Sabbath” (v. 2), the focus falls on the final prepositional phrase, “on the Sabbath.” To the Pharisees it was not so much what these disciples were doing, but when they were doing it. They were “plucking heads of grain... on the Sabbath.” They were breaking the bluest of blue laws.
Where are the Pharisees coming from? What are they thinking here? The fourth commandment, with which I started this chapter, talks about not working on the Sabbath. However, it does not define “not working,” although it certainly implies not doing your six-day-a-week work (i.e., what you do for a living). In fact, in the whole of the Torah, the first five books of the Bible, only one “work” activity was forbidden—kindling fires (Exodus 35:3; cp. the condemnation in Numbers 15:32-36 for gathering sticks for a fire?).
Even if you went beyond the first five books, to Nehemiah and the prophets, there you would find only a few more details regarding what constitutes “work.” There you’d find regulations about not carrying burdens (Jeremiah 17:21-27), not buying or selling (see Nehemiah 10:31; 13:15-17; Amos 8:4, 5), and not talking idly and seeking your own pleasure but instead delighting in God (Isaiah 58:13). But that’s it. In the whole of the Old Testament, that’s it.
This vagueness was problematic for legalists. Their thought was, “Well, if God is not going to give more specification than that, we must add our own specifications, careful clarifications of what constitutes ‘work.’” Thus, over time, like blue laws in our country, many additional commandments were created by man to answer every conceivable Sabbath question. And with these invented and uninspired additions, the Sabbath, which was intended to bring freedom and rest to men, “was hedged around with literally thousands of petty rules and regulations” that ironically made much work of not working. What was originally intended to serve as a sign of Israel’s unique role in the history of redemption and honor the absolute holiness of Yahweh (as their God and Creator) mutated into something wholly un-Scriptural. What started as an amoeba of devotion centered on one’s use of time in relation to one’s worship of God evolved, especially during the exile when Israel was deprived of the temple and Jerusalem, into this monstrous mutation of Jewish political pride.
The Mishnah (which is a compilation of these oral traditions) lists thirty- nine classes of work that profane the Sabbath, “including those we might expect, such as plowing, hunting, and butchering, and those we would not such as tying or loosing knots, sewing more than one stitch, or writing more than one letter” (m. Sabb. 7:2). Some of these novel rulings bordered on the ridiculous. For example, one rule stated, “If a building fell down on the Sabbath enough rubble could be removed to discover if any victims were dead or alive. If alive, they could be rescued, but if dead, the corpses must be left until sunset.”
The disciples were not touching a dead body, which would surely make them unclean. To the Pharisees, however, their touch of these "heads of grain” was just as damning. Of these thirty-nine different classes of work, four of these were reaping, winnowing, threshing, and preparing a meal. And perhaps in the minds of the Pharisees the disciples’ actions broke all four of these rules, and thus it was obvious to them (as they thought it should have been to Jesus) that these men were blatantly breaking God’s commandment. According to the Old Testament law and Jewish tradition, breaking the Sabbath was a serious offense demanding the same sentence as first-degree murder (see Exodus 31:14, 15; 35:2). While it seems fantastic to us, to a devout Jew of the first century one’s behavior on the Sabbath was a matter of life and death.
Have You Not Read... about David?
As a good Jew, in some ways Jesus couldn’t agree more. He viewed the Sabbath as a holy day, and how one understood and practiced the Sabbath was likewise to him a matter of life and death. That is why he sought to correct their perception and practice of the Sabbath by answering their accusation in the way he did, highlighting the spirit of the Law and the original and ultimate intention of the fourth commandment.
To their statement regarding his disciples—“Look, your disciples are doing what is not lawful to do on the Sabbath”—Jesus gives three replies. To these “hypercritical formalists”, Jesus goes to the Bible. First, he gives an example from the former prophets (1 Samuel 21:1-6) about King David, then from the Law (Numbers 28:9, 10) about the priests, and finally he cites the latter prophets (from Hosea 6:6, one of his favorite verses). Jesus brings the Old Testament to his defense. He brings the sword of the Spirit out to cut off all the ungodly traditions that have attached themselves to God’s holy Law.
The first cut comes in verses 3,4, where he says, “Have you not read what David did when he was hungry, and those who were with him: how he entered the house of God and ate the bread of the Presence, which it was not lawful for him to eat nor for those who were with him, but only for the priests?” The first phrase of Christ’s reply is quite sharp. To the Pharisees, Jesus starts by saying, “Have you not read...” and then goes on to give an Old Testament story that would have been as familiar to them as the narrative of Christ’s birth is to us. Jesus’ question “Have you not read... ?” suggests an ironic criticism of their supposed knowledge of Scripture. Our Lord’s remark is in a sense as disrespectful as you or I walking up to a Shakespeare scholar and asking her if she has ever read Macbeth.
Jesus is quite bold. And I admire his boldness, for it reminds me with whom we are dealing. We are not dealing with some average carpenter’s son from some obscure village in ancient Palestine, but the Son of God (remember 11:27).
So Jesus is bold, strategically bold. In verses 3, 4 he basically says to the Pharisees, “Gentlemen, let us see if the Bible can shed some light on your accusation. I assume that you have read 1 Samuel 21, where it records what King David did when he and his companions were extremely hungry?”
The story is this: David went into the tabernacle, the house of God, on the Sabbath and asked for food. (Saul was the actual king; David was the anointed but not yet enthroned king.) The high priest Ahimelech first replied that he couldn’t help because the only food in the house was the Bread of the Presence, the twelve consecrated loaves that were placed on a table in the tabernacle each Sabbath, a meal only eaten by the priests. David begged to partake even of this holy meal. The priest had a choice to make: should he let common mercy (these people are hungry) and this king's authority (this is after all David) override sacred ritual? What did he do? Seeing David’s need and recognizing David’s authority (did Ahimelech take David, not Saul, to be God’s true king?), the priest broke the letter of the Law so as to uphold its spirit. He gave David and his men the consecrated bread. And they gladly ate it.
Jesus is asking the Pharisees, “What does Scripture say about this action? Does it say, ‘Shame on David and Ahimelech—they shouldn’t have done that’? No. It says nothing.” It neither condemns nor approves the action. Does this silence sanction this otherwise condemn-able occurrence? Jesus’ gloss on the 1 Samuel text certainly leans that way. To him, by implication that silence equals evaluative approval.
What then are the implications of this divinely inspired story? Jesus proceeds. First Samuel 21:1-6 gives legal precedence, the implication being that if “the great king David had committed a far greater breach of Sabbath laws when he was in need, and he was not blamed [or punished] for it,” then the disciples are not to be blamed or punished for acting in the manner in which they did. That’s Jesus' argument in verses 3, 4.
Now, if you are a Pharisee listening to this line of reasoning, you might very well agree that round one goes to Jesus. You might concede that Scripture does not berate Ahimelech and David for their inappropriate actions and thus that in a life and death situation God understands and overlooks breaking a commandment. But that would be as far as you would go. “Not so fast, Jesus!” you might say next. “Your disciples were in no danger of starving to death. And besides, David is David—who are you?”
Have You No! Read... about the Priests?
You see, Jesus’ legal precedent argument only works “if Jesus is at least as special as David.” “So Jesus, are you as special as David? Is that what you’re claiming? Are you claiming to be king—a new David?”
“Ah,” Jesus says, “I’ll get to that.” (Just wait for verses 6,8!) But first Jesus wields his sword again. This time he goes to Numbers 28:9, 10 for his second slash (or is it a stab?): “Or have you not read in the Law how on the Sabbath the priests in the temple profane the Sabbath and yet are guiltless?” (v. 5).
I’ll explain Jesus’ argument here via illustration. Jesus is saying here, “Look, priests ‘work’ on Saturdays, right? They workmen the Sabbath. They get all dressed up in their priestly attire, walk over to the temple, light a few lamps, gather wood, and build a fire to bake some loaves of showbread. Is their ‘work’ wrong? No. Why? They are not guilty of breaking the Sabbath because temple work trumps Sabbath rest!’ That’s Jesus’ Biblical argument here.
Now, if the Pharisees had a chance to interject between verses 5, 6 they could have said, “Okay, Jesus. True enough. Temple work trumps Sabbath rest. Your second use of Scripture is correct. But what’s your point?” But then it dawns on them. “Whoa. Now what? Do you think you are equal not just to a king but also to a priest?” And to that Jesus says, “Oh no, I’m not equal to a priest. I’m greater than a priest. I’m greater than the priesthood. Hold on to your phylacteries! ‘I tell you, something greater than the temple is here’” (v. 6). Jesus is not merely greater than the priesthood; he is greater than the place where they “work”!
Can you hear the robes start to tear? Can you hear the word “blasphemy” being breathed throughout the crowd? Do you get what Jesus is getting at here? Do you see how the whole argument holds together? If what King David did trumps the temple, and if the temple trumps Sabbath rest, then it follows logically that if someone greater than David (cp. 1:1) and greater than the temple is here—embodied in the person of Jesus—then Jesus’ disciples can have a little wheat snack on the Sabbath.
Jesus claims to be the fulfillment and embodiment of the Sabbath day, the sanctuary temple, and even the Scriptural Law, the three realities dearest to the people of God. And thus salvation comes not through keeping the Sabbath, perfect obedience to the Law, or temple sacrifice, but only through faith in Christ. Salvation comes (do you remember the last chapter?) only to those who rest in Jesus, who come to him, weary and heavy laden, for final Sabbath rest (see Hebrews 4).
Have You Not Read... about Mercy?
You would think that with such claims Jesus would close his case and let the jury decide what it would decide. But no, Jesus is not finished. He takes the Bible again from these Bible-thumpers and thumps them one more time: “And if you had known [from what’s in this book of yours] what this means, ‘I desire mercy, and not sacrifice’ [Hosea 6:6], you would not have condemned the guiltless [i.e„ my disciples]” (12:7). In other words, love for people (no matter what day it is) is love for God. Even if you bring 10,000 firstborn bulls to the temple to be sacrificed, if you walk over the poor beggar on your way in, don’t think God is pleased with your abundant devotion. Divine devotion without human sympathy is irreligious. It’s ungodly. It’s un-Biblical. Above all God desires mercy. The Sabbath is made for man. The Sabbath is made for man to show mercy to men.
Finally Jesus is done. He rubs his hands. He nods to the jury. He takes his seat. He rests his case. Wait. What’s this? He’s up again. He thunders in essence, “And one final point of clarification—let me be absolutely clear: I can say all I’m saying about the Sabbath (correcting you with those three Scriptures) because ‘the Son of Man is lord of the Sabbath’” (v. 8). Wow!
Jesus is equal with David? Yes. Well, no. He is greater than David. Jesus is equal with the temple? Yes. Well, no. He is greater than the temple. Well, then who is he? Here is who he thinks he is: "the Son of Man.”
The term “the Son of Man” is a reference to the divine king prophesied in the seventh chapter of the book of Daniel. In his vision Daniel saw “one like a son of man” (Daniel 7:13). This “son of man” was presented before God, “the Ancient of Days.” Similar to the Davidic covenant (2 Samuel 7:12, 13) and the beginning of the Great Commission (28:18), Daniel 7:14 reads:
And to him [the Son of Man] was given dominion and glory and a kingdom, that all peoples, nations, and languages should serve him; his dominion is an everlasting dominion, which shall not pass away, and his kingdom one that shall not be destroyed.
As “the Son of Man" Jesus possesses an authority that gives him the right and power to render all poisonous pharisaic superstitions null and void and to dictate whether or not his disciples’ actions were lawful or unlawful, permissible or impermissible. Having been given all authority over everything (11:27), being Lord of Heaven and earth (28:18), Jesus as the Son of Man has Lordship even over the Sabbath!
Enough to Get a Man Killed
Greater than David. Greater than the temple. The Son of Man. Lord of the Sabbath. Those are Jesus’ claims in 12:1-8. And yes, such claims in such a culture are enough to get a man killed.
In the record of Jesus' trial in Matthew 26, after our Lord has been accused of claiming to destroy the temple (an interesting charge in light of our text), the high priest asks Jesus if he is “the Christ, the Son of God” (26:63). Jesus responds, “You have said so” (i.e., “I am the Christ, the Son of God”). But he doesn’t stop there. He adds, “But I tell you, from now on you will see the Son of Man seated at the right hand of Power and coming on the clouds of heaven” (26:64). And how will the council react to all this—that he will destroy the temple, that he is the Son of Man? Verses 65, 66 of Matthew 26 tell us:
Then the high priest tore his robes and said, “He has uttered blasphemy. What further witnesses do we need? You have now heard his blasphemy. What is your judgment?” They answered, “He deserves death.”
This little Sabbath controversy here in Matthew 12 is no little matter. It is a matter of life and death, Jesus’ life and death.
If you came to this text expecting me to write about whether Christians should keep the Sabbath or not, whether you should feel guilty or not about watching sports on Sunday, I won’t tell you what I think because this passage is not about that. Here we are not to ask, are we as Christians to keep the Sabbath, or if so, how do we? Rather we are to ask, who is Jesus? What authority does he have? And what does it matter? Who is Jesus and what authority does he have over the days of the week, over kingdoms and nations, over me and my heart?
(R. Kent Hughes. and Douglas Sean O'Donnell., 2013; edited Carl Hinton., 2020)