Jesus: Legalist, Lawbreaker, or Lord from South Woods Baptist Church on Vimeo.

In the Gospel of Matthew, a few Pharisees, having heard that Jesus silenced the Sadducees, gathered together. One of them, a lawyer, asked Jesus a question. Matthew’s gospel says he asked it, “to test him.” The question was, “Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?” Jesus replied, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment. And the second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” Then Jesus gives the most succinct summation of the thousands of scrolls these Pharisees poured over, memorized, and attempted to live according to: “On these two commandments depend all the Law and the prophets” (Matt 22:34–37).

Not some of the law. All the law finds its essence in these two commandments: love God and love your neighbor. And if all the law depends upon those two commands, I think it’s safe to say the 4th command––Remember the Sabbath day––does as well.

In Jesus’ day, however, the Sabbath had become something altogether different for many, in particular the Pharisees. Rather than being a gift to them––a tutor or guide––for the purposes of helping them love God and for rejuvenating them to serve others, it became a treadmill for attempting to accrue righteousness.

In fact, the Pharisees went beyond the Old Testament law, spelling out extra–biblical detailed particulars of what it actually meant to remember the Sabbath. For example, some taught that on the Sabbath one could take 5 steps, but then he or she must take a break. Women couldn’t wear a bow in their hair because that might be construed as carrying a burden.[1]

Speaking of burdens, the Pharisees made the law one. In our text, Jesus clarifies it.

1. What gives Jesus the right/authority to clarify the law? (v. 1-5)

Pastor Phil mentioned a few weeks ago that we’d entered a section of Luke’s gospel where Jesus would shatter the misperceptions of God’s ways.[2] This text functions as something of the peak of the crescendo. Jesus has been controversial. By the end of our text today, the teachers of the law will have had enough.

The first three words of Luke 6 tell us the issue, On the Sabbath. What happens on the Sabbath? V. 1 While he was going through the grainfields, his disciples plucked and ate some heads of grain, rubbing them in their hands.

I won’t appeal too much to the other Gospel accounts of this episode, but Matthew’s Gospel that we read earlier did mention that the disciples were hungry (Matt 12). We may not be farmers, but you can imagine the battle you face at Kroger when you’ve missed lunch. The disciples walk through a neighbor’s field and can’t help themselves. Deuteronomy 23 actually permitted this kind of gleaning in the fields.[3] It’s not stealing, so long as you don’t use a sickle. They were hungry; they ate. And not tangential, they did it in front of Jesus.

But they did it in front of someone else too. Note verse 2: But some of the Pharisees said, “ Why are you doing what is not lawful to do on the Sabbath?” I found humorous Alistair Begg on the Pharisees’ constant presence in Luke. When you read the Gospels, you sort of wonder if there were 10 million Pharisees. They’re in the temple courts; they’re in the fields; they lurk around every corner.

Why would Luke include so many (most of them still to come) encounters with the Pharisees? Because just as he is progressively revealing to the reader the identity of Jesus, he’s also little by little showing us the growing antagonism toward Jesus. It’s character development. What we’re seeing here is that there aren’t 10 million Pharisees; instead there are a zealous and determined few who stalk Jesus and his disciples for a specific purpose.

And in our text, they do what they do: shine a spotlight on potential missteps. The disciples had certainly broken a law, but the question is whose? Again, I mention, th[...]