This is a week of considering the practice of Sabbath keeping. While others will be telling you just what their Sabbath keeping looks like, I want to share what it shouldn’t look like, a topic Jesus addresses in the following passage:
Jesus Is Lord of the Sabbath
At that time Jesus went through the grainfields on the Sabbath. His disciples were hungry and began to pick some heads of grain and eat them. When the Pharisees saw this, they said to him, “Look! Your disciples are doing what is unlawful on the Sabbath.”
He answered, “Haven’t you read what David did when he and his companions were hungry? He entered the house of God, and he and his companions ate the consecrated bread—which was not lawful for them to do, but only for the priests. Or haven’t you read in the Law that the priests on Sabbath duty in the temple desecrate the Sabbath and yet are innocent? I tell you that something greater than the temple is here. If you had known what these words mean, ‘I desire mercy, not sacrifice,’ you would not have condemned the innocent. For the Son of Man is Lord of the Sabbath.”
Going on from that place, he went into their synagogue, and a man with a shriveled hand was there. Looking for a reason to bring charges against Jesus, they asked him, “Is it lawful to heal on the Sabbath?”
He said to them, “If any of you has a sheep and it falls into a pit on the Sabbath, will you not take hold of it and lift it out? How much more valuable is a person than a sheep! Therefore it is lawful to do good on the Sabbath.”
Then he said to the man, “Stretch out your hand.” So he stretched it out and it was completely restored, just as sound as the other.
But the Pharisees went out and plotted how they might kill Jesus.” Matthew 12:1-14
If I boil this story down to one phrase, it would be, “God desires mercy not sacrifice”. The Pharisees were using the scripture like a club. Do this! Don’t do that! They were constantly putting others down, pointing out their sins, as a means of building themselves up — “We are cool”. For them it was all about “have to’s” and “must nots”. You did things the Law says you should. That is the “sacrifice” part of Jesus’ words, the thing he said to avoid. Right idea, wrong motivation. Notice that right after condemning Jesus for “breaking” the fourth Commandment, the Pharisees set out to break the sixth: “Thou Shalt Not Murder”. That’s legalism at its worst. But Jesus emphasized, instead of “sacrifice”, the act of “mercy”. It is about the condition of one’s heart. I think of God’s words in I Samuel.
But the LORD said to Samuel, “Do not consider his appearance or his height, for I have rejected him. The LORD does not look at the things people look at. People look at the outward appearance, but the LORD looks at the heart.” 1 Samuel 16:7
For me, my Sabbath place, whenever and however it occurs, is a place of love, not a place of do’s and don’t. It should be the point of departure for me every single day. My motivation should be about carrying the love of Jesus to a hurting world. That supersedes everything else.
And that is mercy!!
Each of us should please our neighbors for their good, to build them up. Romans 15:2
by Bruce Hanson
