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Welcome to our look together at Mark chapter 2, our last day of this look, day
5, verses 23 to 28 today. As we've been walking through this chapter this week,
this whole chapter is a reminder of why some of us love to read Mark and others
feel like something is missing as you read Mark. Mark is a bullet point,
executive summary, get to the point and get off the point writer.

It's bam bam bam bam with Mark. Now the Gospel of John instead goes into a full
explanation of all the details of what happened and then he explains the
theological significance of all of those details. But Mark just says this
happened, this happened, this happened, this happened.

Remember again the point of Mark, to paint for us a portrait of Jesus as a
servant. This is an opportunity to be awed by what Jesus did for us. Mark is all
about action and even the teachings flow out of the actions of Jesus.

The verses we're looking at today are another example. Mark chapter 2 verses 23
to 28, listen to what happened. One Sabbath Jesus was going through the grain
fields and as his disciples walked along they began to pick some heads of grain.

The Pharisees said to him, "Look, why are they doing what is unlawful on the
Sabbath? " He answered, "Have you never read what David did when he and his
companions were hungry and in need? In the days of Abiathar the high priest he
entered the house of God and ate the consecrated bread which is lawful only for
priests to eat and he also gave some to his companions.

And then Jesus said to them, "The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the
Sabbath. And so the Son of Man is Lord even of the Sabbath. " The teaching that
Jesus does here about the Sabbath and following him comes out of this experience
where his disciples are walking along, eating, getting some grain out of the
grain fields and the Pharisees say what they're doing is not lawful.

They weren't talking about them eating the grain. It was totally lawful for them
to eat the grain. You can look at Deuteronomy 23, 24 to 25.

The law says that people could glean from the fields as they walked through.
This was one of the ways of feeding the hungry, the poor in that society. You
couldn't take a sickle and cut the grain but with your hand you could take the
grain so you could just get enough to feed yourself.

So the problem wasn't that they were eating the food. The problem was when they
were eating it. They were doing it on a Sabbath day.

That was the problem. And according to their law you could not do this on a
Sabbath day. And the challenge is how could your disciples do this?

Now I'm hoping you'll notice with me how Jesus teaches the Pharisees that day.
Instead of getting into a detailed argument with them over Sabbath laws, he
challenges them to think in this entirely different way. Jesus' wisdom in all of
these encounters with the Pharisees, it is so clear.

Instead of letting people put him into a defensive mode by their attempts to
trap him with their definitions of guilt, Jesus uses these conversations as an
opportunity to open the window, to let the fresh air of truth of faith into the
room. Here he reminds them of two simple truths. Truth one, the Sabbath was made
for man, not man for the Sabbath.

And truth two, the son of man, he's talking about himself here, Jesus is Lord of
the Sabbath. Truth one, the Sabbath was made for man. He's saying man was not
made to serve the Sabbath day, the Sabbath day was made to serve man.

Now first how was man serving the Sabbath here? Well there were many, many rules
that had been built around this Sabbath day celebration. God had said I want you
to rest on the Sabbath.

But those who had decided to devote their lives to keeping the rule of the law
had decided not only to have that law but also to build other laws around that
law so they'd be sure to never break the middle law, the core of the law. Their
number one rule book was called the Mishnah. Just one of the Ten Commandments
about keeping the Sabbath, there are 24 chapters in the Mishnah about keeping
the Sabbath.

Chapter after chapter after chapter application of this is what you do this
time, this is what you do here, and even that was not enough. They even had to
interpret the Mishnah so they wrote the Talmud which interpreted the Mishnah.
And the Talmud has 128 pages on just keeping the Sabbath.

It tried to cover every circumstance of life. They had it all figured out. You
weren't supposed to work on the Sabbath, you were supposed to rest.

How did you know if you were working or not? They had all the rules laid out,
how far you could walk, how far you could walk outside the city, what you could
do, what you could do for your animals, what you couldn't do, how you could
cook, how you couldn't cook, all of the little things like tying a knot. How
would you know if you were working or not if you happened to tie a knot?

They decided that if it was absolutely necessary for human life, then you could
tie a knot. If it wasn't necessary for human life, then you couldn't tie a knot.
Here's one of the interesting things in that law.

If you wanted to get some water, you had to do it before the Sabbath. You
couldn't tie a knot and lower a bucket into the well on the Sabbath because you
could survive one day without water. It wasn't absolutely necessary for human
life.

However, if a lady's girdle broke, they deemed that it was absolutely necessary
for human life to tie that girdle back together even if it was a Sabbath day
because you couldn't go one day with an untied girdle. I know it's a pretty
funny law, but even more humorous is how people began to take advantage of the
law. Now get this, you couldn't tie a knot in a rope and lower it to get some
water, but you could tie a knot in a girdle.

So you know what creative people did in that day? They would take a woman's
girdle and they'd tie a knot in the girdle on the bucket and then use the girdle
to lower the water bucket into the well so they could get water on a Sabbath
day. That's how ridiculous this became.

It began with a heart to follow God. It began with a heart to have high moral
character, a deep religious hunger to follow the law, but it became this
profound spiritual blindness. How did that happen?

It happened because they made all these rules upon rules and they got to a place
where they could depend on themselves to get to God instead of depending on the
wonderful truth that God gives us. Now God has things for you to do, there's no
doubt about that. As you follow him, as I follow him, he has plenty for us to
do, there's plenty of actions in the Christian faith, but I can't act my way
into faith.

Faith comes first, it leads the way. There are still many people today who think
that real faith is doing your best to keep the Ten Commandments, and that leads
us to the same trap that these people were in. Jesus said that man was not made
to serve the Sabbath, Sabbath was made for man.

By the way, before we go on, what does this mean that Sabbath was made for man?
God knows us, he created us, and he knows that we need a day of rest. And so on
the seventh day of creation, he took a day of rest, a Sabbath day, as an example
to us.

God never gets tired, he didn't need to rest, but he did it as an example to us
that you and I need a day of rest. And the Sabbath day is given not for us to
serve it by a bunch of little rules that wear us out, but for us to rest, to
rest our hearts in him, to rest from our labors, to do something different on
that day. Now whenever you hear people making rules about how you should rest on
the Sabbath, they're going down the same road that the Pharisees went down.

But for my heart, for your heart, the Sabbath is all about, I need one day out
of seven at least, or I take a day of rest, or I rest in him. Jesus said the
Sabbath was made for man, not man to serve the Sabbath, and then he also said a
second thing that day. He said the Son of Man is Lord of the Sabbath.

Jesus is Lord. Jesus is Lord, not the ways that we worship him is Lord, not the
ways that we serve him is Lord, Jesus is Lord. If we're not careful, we can do
the same thing that happened in that day.

I have to serve Jesus Christ by worshiping at this time on Sunday, I have to
serve Jesus Christ by worshiping with these kinds of songs on a Sunday, I have
to serve Jesus Christ and love him by worshiping with this kind of order on a
Sunday, and if I don't do it in that way, then somehow I am not serving him. You
and I, when we do that, we've made the way that we worship him Lord, rather than
Jesus Christ the Lord. We can do it with the way that we serve him too.

I have to serve Jesus Christ by serving this particular group of people in this
way. I have to go to the homeless in this country on this date and serve them in
this way, or it's not true service of Jesus. We can build rules and regulations
around the way that we worship Jesus and grow in Jesus and serve Jesus and reach
out in Jesus' name to the extent that even though we don't have a mishnah and a
talmud, we've got our own little rule book in our mind.

We all do it. We all do it. And Jesus wants to break it down.

And the way he breaks it down in my life and in your life is with this one word,
Lord. Jesus is Lord. I, you decided to follow a savior.

We're not following a rule book, we're following a savior. We're not following a
list of laws, we're following a savior. We're not following principles.

We are following a person. Jesus has principles for us to live out, but the
minute I lose sight of the person and all I see are the principles, in that
minute the principle has become the Lord and not Jesus. I don't know about you,
but just about every day of my life I have to refresh my perspective on the
person of Jesus, get my eyes on him again personally, my relationship with him.

It's a daily decision in life. So let's make that decision for today. Jesus, as
we talk to you in this moment, we thank you that you are Lord.

Thank you for the ways and the direction and the great things you are doing in
our lives to cause us to follow you, the habits we're building, the places we
serve. But Lord, in this moment we put all that aside and we just focus on you.
You're the Lord.

You're the one we're following. You're why we're doing all of this. And instead
of focusing on what we do today, Lord, help us to focus on who we're doing it
for.

You, the one who gave your life for us, the one who lives now to give us life.
Thank you, Jesus, for who you are. You are Lord.

We pray this, Jesus, in your name, the name of our Lord and Savior, Jesus
Christ, amen. Join us next week as we continue our look at the Gospel of Mark.
Chapter 3 is a chapter that's all about Jesus' relationships with his disciples,
with the crowd, with his enemies, with his family.

See you next week.