Text: Mark 2:23-3:6
Focus: Mercy
Function: to see how mercy triumphs over the law.
2:23One Sabbath he was going through the grain fields, and as they made their way his disciples began to pluck heads of grain. 24The Pharisees said to him, “Look, why are they doing what is not lawful on the Sabbath?” 25And he said to them, “Have you never read what David did when he and his companions were hungry and in need of food, 26how he entered the house of God when Abiathar was high priest and ate the bread of the Presence, which it is not lawful for any but the priests to eat, and he gave some to his companions?” 27Then he said to them, “The Sabbath was made for humankind and not humankind for the Sabbath, 28so the Son of Man is lord even of the Sabbath.”
3:1Again he entered the synagogue, and a man was there who had a withered hand. 2They were watching him to see whether he would cure him on the Sabbath, so that they might accuse him. 3And he said to the man who had the withered hand, “Come forward.” 4Then he said to them, “Is it lawful to do good or to do harm on the Sabbath, to save life or to kill?” But they were silent. 5He looked around at them with anger; he was grieved at their hardness of heart and said to the man, “Stretch out your hand.” He stretched it out, and his hand was restored. 6The Pharisees went out and immediately conspired with the Herodians against him, how to destroy him.
Good morning! I love this passage, or these passages, because of the irony of Jesus’ ministry and the way he confounds those who live merely religious lives and do not strive to be humble, and to love mercy and to do the just things that God lays on our hearts.
Both of the passages have the same theme and I see the theme as how the mercy of God is foremost in our lives and ministry because it is more important than being judgmental.
Probably the tension in the passage is demonstrated in chapter 3, verse 2: “They were watching him to see whether he would cure him on the Sabbath, so that they might accuse him.”
They did not care about the plight of the man with the withered hand, they only cared about their own plans to use Jesus’ mercy against him because he denied what they believed to be the requirements of the law.
It goes like this. To them, Jesus’ “job” was to heal the sick and since that was his job, he couldn’t break the law of the Sabbath and perform any work on Saturday.
They were trying to use their religious purity code to entrap him.
The irony is that if that was Jesus’ job, to perform miracles, then he must actually be sent from God and they should have realized that they were resisting God’s messenger.
Now, the purity code was important to them. It was a capital offense to work on the Saturday according to the Mosaic law. And, they believed the reason for the exile and terrible suffering that they had endured 600 years before was the punishment from God for not following the strict code of the law.
Some of them believed that they were actually being faithful to God in their desire to kill Jesus because Jesus, according to them, didn’t meet the strict requirements of the purity code. The Mosaic law spelled out for them what they believed to be very strict standards for a prophet and Jesus’ so called offense of working on Saturday offended some of them, and for others, they didn’t care about anything but power and they used it to kill him.
Remember, Jesus also hung out with prostitutes, lepers and other unclean people. Their purity culture could not abide the fact that Jesus was changing the rules that they thought were keeping them safe from the terror of God and they claimed it had been working for 400 years.
Of course, it wasn’t actually working. They were under bondage to the Romans and things couldn’t get much worse for the general population. But the ruling class was using religion to keep the people in this kind of bondage because they didn’t want to give up their power and the wealth it gave them.
So, there is a lot of irony here. They were persecuting Jesus to keep them safe from a system that wasn’t even working for them.
But Jesus is on a completely different wavelength! His wavelength is mercy and compassion. Then there is power. Some of them with legitimate interests and some of them with evil intent.
The lesson to be learned from this seems clear to me and is reiterated in the sermon on the mount, Don’t judge others by religious standards. Instead, love them, accept them, and allow them to and even help them to meet their needs.
The first illustration of th is mercy has to do with the disciples working to satisfy their hunger on Saturday.
Now we just bought a new electric range. It has a Sabbath mode. It is a mode that programs the oven to not work on Saturday to ensure that all food is prepared before Saturday so that a person doesn’t need to work on Saturday. In other words, this rule still applies today in Orthodox Jewish homes.
The disciples were breaking the rule by shucking the raw grain and eating it. They should have already prepared food in order to be ceremonially pure.
And when the Pharisees question Jesus about it, he lays down a new principle for us to consider. And that is this. The Law was made to help people love God and others, not to burden them with commands that might appear to be religious, but don’t really help them live a life without limits as Jesus said would happen for us.
Jesus uses scripture to show them how God ordained a rule breaking episode in order to preserve the life of David and his men.
Every day 12 loaves of bread were baked and set on the alter before God.
And the rule that Moses gave was that only the priests could eat the day old bread and if you were not a priest and you ate the bread, you were to be put to death.
And Jesus tells them that God ordained the breaking of the law in order to nurture and aid one of his children.
Jesus shows us the heart of God’s desire for mercy.
Then the next passage shows Jesus doing exactly the same thing.
He heals on the Sabbath because he says that God’s principle is to restore people. It was his mission. He came to seek and restore the lost.
Remember, the Bible says that Jesus died to save the world, to restore the world back to God.
His salvation is healing and restoration.
It isn’t just personal, but it is for the whole society.
That is why the early disciples shared their belongings, because they recognized that God had blessed them and they were to share God’s blessings with others instead of hoarding them in the fear that God will not bless them still in the future.
I understand that fear and I am trying to be obedient to the prayer, “Give us this day our daily bread….”
This is the move of God. To break down the barriers of the law and to set us free to do what is necessary to love God by loving our neighbors.
Keeping the Sabbath was in important commandment. And by the time the Epistles are written, we see different groups of followers having a diverse pattern of Sabbath worship from Saturday, to Sunday, the day of resurrection, the “Lord’s day,” to every day is a Sabbath so some groups abandoning the Sabbath requirement altogether since we have already entered into our rest with God.
And it was God’s Spirit moving in their midst that changed the rule.
It happened again in Acts 10 when God changed the rule about collaborating with Gentiles. Again, the Jews were afraid that mixing with Gentiles would corrupt them, which also lead to their destruction 600 years before, and they would be repeating the sin. They were taught to be prejudiced and then, all of a sudden, the Church, when people are baptized says “Neither Jew or Gentile, Slave or Free, Male of Female, but all are one in Christ.”
The Spirit of God changed the rules of the OT because God’s mercy takes precedent over God’s judgment. As a matter of fact, he commands us to be like Jesus and be merciful or we will not receive mercy, according to James 2:13
And in the end, Revelation 7:9 gives a picture of heaven where all races, nations, tongues and peoples are together before the God in God’s majesty.
Mercy toward others took place over judgment of them.
God is calling us to that same mercy.
It is compassionate and it is part of our mission to spread the Kingdom of God from one person to another through acts of kindness.
Romans 2:4 says that It is the kindness of God, the mercy of God, that leads people to change their minds and embrace the love of God given to them by the Spirit of God.
So let the Spirit’s love fill our heats and give mercy when we face difficult people or situations that we don’t understand.
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