When good things become bad things

Luke 6:1-11

6 On a Sabbath, while he was going through the grainfields, his disciples plucked and ate some heads of grain, rubbing them in their hands. 2 But some of the Pharisees said, “Why are you doing what is not lawful to do on the Sabbath?” 3 And Jesus answered them, “Have you not read what David did when he was hungry, he and those who were with him: 4 how he entered the house of God and took and ate the bread of the Presence, which is not lawful for any but the priests to eat, and also gave it to those with him?” 5 And he said to them, “The Son of Man is lord of the Sabbath.”

6 On another Sabbath, he entered the synagogue and was teaching, and a man was there whose right hand was withered. 7 And the scribes and the Pharisees watched him, to see whether he would heal on the Sabbath, so that they might find a reason to accuse him. 8 But he knew their thoughts, and he said to the man with the withered hand, “Come and stand here.” And he rose and stood there. 9 And Jesus said to them, “I ask you, is it lawful on the Sabbath to do good or to do harm, to save life or to destroy it?” 10 And after looking around at them all he said to him, “Stretch out your hand.” And he did so, and his hand was restored. 11 But they were filled with fury and discussed with one another what they might do to Jesus.

My name is Ellis and today we are continuing the series of Luke.

Let me start by asking you a few questions....

1)    Do you pour milk first, or cereal first?

2)    Do you shower first thing in the morning? Or at the end of the day?

3)    Do you wet your toothbrush before you put the toothpaste or after?

4)    Do you separate your socks or you wash them with other clothes?

I can already see we will all be split in teams over these issues. I am definitely the one who will pour milk first because I want my cereal still crunchy! And I am def the team who separate socks. Last question, which of these questions are important?

Would you agree that things that are not really important can possibly become important to us? If you have ever had roommates or if you are married, you know that even such trivial things can be important enough to start a fight, right husbands and wives?. Edrick and I, we dated for around 4.5 years or so. I dare say that 80% of our relationship era was filled with fights. I’m not joking. It’s even more intense than having daily vitamins, we could fight like 3-4 times a day. It’s insane. When we look back on some of our fights, we couldn’t even remember what we were fighting about, but at those moments, I promised you, it felt like those things were worth fighting for.

Why do we do that? Why do we feel like what we fought for was very important? Why at those moments were we blinded  to differentiate what’s truly important and what’s not?

In our Christian life, we have plenty of good things. Things that we know for sure God wants us to do. But the passage we are learning today in Luke 6 shows us that it is very possible for good things to become bad things. Here in verse 1-11, there are 2 stories, one after another. It has one common theme, it was about the Sabbath. We are going to learn 3 points today:

1)    The Danger of Sabbath

2)    The LORD of Sabbath

3)    The True Sabbath

1) THE DANGER OF SABBATH

A little bit of context - The gospel of Luke is written by Luke himself. He was a doctor, a historian and a friend of Paul. As you can imagine, being a doctor, he’s very logical, very well-educated, detail oriented. For him, the story of Jesus is not just ancient history. He wants to show his readers that Jesus’ story is the fulfillment of the long covenant of God and His people. His grand purpose is to help us to see that Jesus is indeed the Christ. He is God’s incarnate, the long awaited Messiah.

Let’s start with Verse 1-2. On a Sabbath,while he was going through the grainfields, his disciples plucked and ate some heads of grain, rubbing them in their hands. 2 But some of the Pharisees said, “Why are you doing what is not lawful to do on the Sabbath?” The disciples were busy picking the grain in the field. In that culture, people are allowed to go to any field and help themselves to get food. They are allowed to gather by hand the leftovers after the harvest (often called Gleaning). So here, the problem is not picking the grain, the problem was it all happened during a Sabbath day. What is so important about the Sabbath? Let’s learn a bit of history here.

The Sabbath is very central for the Jews, because it was taken as the sign of the covenant between God and Israelites. It is part of the 10 commandments that Moses brought down from Mount Sinai. That means, breaking the law of Sabbath equals to breaking the 10 commandments. It’s such a big deal. Ex 31:14 You shall keep the Sabbath, because it is holy for you. Everyone who profanes it shall be put to death. Whoever does any work on it, that soul shall be cut off from among his people. It is such a major violation, life and death! The Pharisees added more rules on top of God’s Law to make sure no work would be done. So stressful isn’t it? What an irony, even to rest you have rules for it?! It’s the exact opposite of the idea of rest.

Fun fact, do you know that in Israel, there is always one elevator in hotels or apartments that will stop for every single floor during Sabbath day so the Jews do not need to press the buttons as it is considered as “work”.

This is more interesting. In 1992, three blocks of apartments were burned in Tel Aviv, because tenants waited while they asked a rabbi whether a call to the fire department would violate the law because it happened on the Sabbath. It took half an hour for the Rabbi to say yes, by that time the fire spread to two neighboring apartments. So can you imagine - they treat the Sabbath Law very seriously! Thankfully, no one was hurt in the fire.

Back to Luke 6, from the perspectives of Jewish laws, Jesus and the disciples were guilty of multiple violations - by picking the grain, separating it from the stalk, rubbing it with their hands, separating the kernel, and even putting it in their mouth itself is a violation. It's just over-the-top ridiculous. The Pharisees genuinely believed Jesus was breaking God’s law about Sabbath.

Now let’s jump to verse 6-7, the second incident. On another Sabbath, he entered the synagogue and was teaching, and a man was there whose right hand was withered. 7 And the scribes and the Pharisees watched him, to see whether he would heal on the Sabbath, so that they might find a reason to accuse him.

Different incident, same issue. This time it wasn’t about eating the grain on the Sabbath; it was about healing on the Sabbath. According to Jewish laws, you are allowed to heal someone on the Sabbath only and only if that person is literally dying at that moment. But Jesus? He did not wait the next day. He healed that man right away on the spot.

So far, can you feel the tension building up? On one hand, the Pharisees tried their best to obey God’s law. They wanted to do the right thing. Then, on the other hand, you have Jesus here, who seemed like a ‘rebel’ towards God’s law. If you were to choose a team, the Pharisees would seem to be on the right team,wouldn't it?

Of course, in a literal time, we know that Pharisees were the wrong one. But I want us to pause a little, imagine being in their shoes. They genuinely want to obey God’s law. Their desire comes from good intentions. This makes such a disturbing warning for me, and for us all, Christians. It is so easy to find ourselves doing things in the name of our love for God and good intentions for good things. But if we are not careful, we too can easily fall into that danger of turning good things into bad things.

What are the good things in our Christian life? Reading the bible, going to church, going to MC, serving at RSE, sharing the gospel with our friends, listening to gospel-centered contents, gospel-centered music, rebuking the sin of our brothers and sisters in Christ, teaching our kids to pray and discipling them in Christ, and those are just a few examples. Now, the question I want to ask is this: When do these good things actually become bad things? Are we ever in danger of doing the same thing: of allowing good things we do for God to become bad things? Let’s look at what Jesus said about the issue.

2) THE LORD OF SABBATH

We can learn so much from Jesus’ responses. The first incident in V3-5 And Jesus answered them, “Have you not read what David did when he was hungry, he and those who were with him: 4 how he entered the house of God and took and ate the bread of the Presence, which is not lawful for any but the priests to eat, and also gave it to those with him?”. And he said to them, “The Son of Man is lord of the Sabbath.”

In the OT stories, when David was running from Saul, David and his men were hungry. When David visited the high priest Ahimelech, he asked for some food. Ahimelech said that the only food available was the “Holy bread”. This bread was holy and only the priests and his family could eat it. In the end, Ahimelech gave the bread to David and his men because they were in need. So that’s the story Jesus was reciting here.

Notice that Jesus responded with the question ‘have you not read’? He's talking to the Pharisees here.  These are the men who are supposed to know the scripture by heart. They must have studied this story over a thousand times since they were babies. They should be the experts of the Bible.

William Barclay, a Scottish theologian, says it is possible to read Scripture meticulously to know the Bible inside and out from cover to cover to be able to quote it word by word exactly and to pass any exam on it and yet still completely missing its real meaning. This means, it is possible to read the Bible without knowing our God personally. It is possible to be morally good while still completely missing out on the essence of the gospel. It is possible to go to church every week, attend your MC every week and to serve in multiple ministries, without having a ongoing relationship with God.It is possible to do all that without knowing the ultimate WHO behind it all.

You know, when life is hard.. we ask a lot of questions. Maybe not the one we say out loud with our friends, but we ask them in our heart.
Why did I lose this pregnancy?

What if my spouse died tonight?

Why did my girlfriend cheat on me?

How did this bad thing happen to me?

Why can’t I have a normal relationship with my siblings, with my parents?

What if my kid turns away from his faith?

When will this end?

What good is it for me?

Do you realise? We always ask “Why, when, how” when we face problems - because we want to make sense of it. It’s very humane. Our first response is we try to google it, chat GPT - it. I would imagine back then for the Pharisee, they didn't have Chat GPT, they would go through the book of laws, the scroll..what would God’s law say about this?

We would almost never ever ask about the “Who?”. Yet, the Scripture shows us a different response. Scriptures always answer our questions with the “Who”. Who is in control? Who will save me? Who will give me mercy? Who will rescue me? Who loves me unconditionally? Who knows my every thought? Who cares for my every need? Who comforts me? Who sustains me?

Same with this instance, Jesus did not debate over what is technically considered work on the Sabbath. Instead, Jesus responded with WHO He is. He said to them I AM the Lord of the sabbath. Every Jews knows that God is the Lord of the Sabbath. God is the One who creates the Sabbath. It was such a bold declaration. The Pharisees were furious! This is blasphemy.

You see the story about Jesus and His disciple picking the grain on Sabbath, David eating the holy bread. I could not help but ask - Why in these instances, it feels as if the law was compromised? Why did God overlook it? Why didn't God strike them dead?

What’s interesting is that Matthew 12 tells us that Jesus asked them another question during this same event. Jesus said 5 Or have you not read in the Law how on the Sabbath the priests in the temple profane the Sabbath and are guiltless? 6 I tell you, something greater than the temple is here. 7 And if you had known what this means, ‘I desire mercy, and not sacrifice,’ you would not have condemned the guiltless. 8 For the Son of Man is lord of the Sabbath.”

The key is in V6 I tell you, something greater than the temple is here. There is something greater above those Sabbath laws. Jesus is saying that “I am greater than these laws. I AM the POINT of Sabbath. These laws are pointing to me.”

During hard times in the bible, the psalmist asked most of our questions, “Why?” and “How long?”, but he did not just stay there. He kept on walking, focusing his heart on who God is, what God has done, and His promises to his people. After pouring his heart to God, he found at the end that God is the deepest answer that he ever needed. God is the one who loves, who saves, and who helps. Today, maybe a lot of us here are asking lots of questions, how long Lord, are we going like this? Why this why that? How and when is it going to be better? I too have a lot of questions so this is something that we can learn together.

God doesn’t promise to answer all of our questions. Like Job, we may never know why some things have happened to us, but there is one question that God always answers - that is Who He is. And we don’t want to miss that question. Christina Fox said “when we know the answer to “Who?” we’ve found the answer to the most important question we could ever ask”.

Let’s see the second incident. 9 And Jesus said to them, “I ask you, is it lawful on the Sabbath to do good or to do harm, to save life or to destroy it?” 10 And after looking around at them all he said to him, “Stretch out your hand.” And he did so, and his hand was restored.

Jesus responded with a question again this time for self reflection because Jesus knew the Pharisees’ heart. They didn't care about doing good. They cared about looking morally good. Jesus rebuked them by pointing out the mission (purpose) of Sabbath, that is to do good and to serve God’s people. So in summary, what do we learn from Jesus’ declaration? He is The Lord of Sabbath and He came to do good for God’s people. He tells us who he is and his mission - which leads us to the last point.

3) THE TRUE SABBATH

Sabbath day is not just a day to be idle. The Jews gather together in synagogues to worship, pray, and listen to the Word of God. Sabbath rest is not the only day of physical rest but also a day of worship.

Edrick once said in his sermon, “The Sabbath is made FOR us but not ABOUT us. It is about God. The Sabbath points us to Jesus. He is the One to be worshipped. He is the One to be made holy, not the day. The main point of the Sabbath is so that we can fix our eyes on Jesus. That’s worship.

Sabbath is such a good gracious gift from God but as soon as the Pharisee added man-made laws around it, it turned into a burden. Does that sound familiar with our Christian life? Both in the old and new covenants, human sinful nature has a tendency to take God’s instruction and make it external rather than internal, religious rather than faithful, law rather than grace. This is the very nature of sin. It is when we put less important things in the place of the most important. The order is completely twisted.

And this is when good things can easily become bad things. The Pharisees have good intentions, that is to help other people obey God’s Laws. But they elevated the law so much that they missed out on the most important thing which is the relationship with God. They missed out on the Who. Rules without personal relationships is what we call legalism. We are so focused on correcting external behaviour, we miss out on the heart issue. That’s very scary. We don’t want to fall into legalism.

Don’t get me wrong. God demands every Christian to obey the law. We can’t say that we do not want legalism, so we just live however we like, totally avoiding God’s law. The danger of legalism is not the law keeping but what grows out of that -  self righteousness. Legalism makes us think that IF we keep the law well, our records can make us righteous. We feel like we are better than the person next to us. That’s what was produced in the Pharisees.

But the Bible is very clear, every single one (without exception) falls short of the glory of God, and nothing can cleanse us other than the blood of Jesus Christ. Martyn Lloyd-Jones said; “If the grace you have received does not help you to keep the law, you have not received grace. If you claim to love Christ and yet are living an unholy life, there is only one thing to say about you. You are a bare-faced liar.” Simply put, we can love the law without loving God, but we cannot love God without loving the law.

So what does Sabbath mean now for us?

Heb 4:9-11 9 So then, there remains a Sabbath rest for the people of God, 10 for whoever has entered God's rest has also rested from his works as God did from his. 11 Let us therefore strive to enter that rest, so that no one may fall by the same sort of disobedience.

Hebrew says there remains a Sabbath rest for you and I as Christians, but then he goes on to say that we who have believed enter that rest. It's not those who successfully keep “the day”. It is for those who believe in Him. The true needed rest that does good to our soul. Hebrew says through Jesus and only through Jesus, you can have this rest, and not just for a day, but for seven days a week 365 days a year.

Why only through Jesus? Because the law has been fulfilled in the person and the work of Jesus Christ on the cross. 2 Cor 5:21 "For our sake He made Him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in Him we might become the righteousness of God."  Jesus was crying while he was crucified. Because God made Him to be sin. He was experiencing eternal restlessness because there is no rest available for those who turned away from God. Jesus was experiencing that so that when He died, He is able to tell us, “it is finished”. When we receive Him as our saviour, we rest not on our work but His. We are saved not because of my record but his record. Tim Keller explained this so well. He said, the moment you say that, God lays your sins on Jesus and His righteousness to you, which means when God looks at you in Christ He said “it is good”. In the same way when God looked at everything He made in creation, he said “That’s good” and He rested. He was satisfied with what's been done.

Because of the cross, when God looks at us now, everything that we need to do is done, every requirement of the law that we need to do has been done. We no longer need to earn our way in. Keller said the only set of eyes in the world that matter most, has already told you, “this is my beloved child of whom I am well pleased”. He’s pleased with us, already, way before we can do anything for Him.

God made Sabbath for our good (we need it), to remind us that there is so much more to us than our work. We are not slaves to our work. Slaves have no rest. They are always too busy. In our context nowadays, we are constantly slammed with work - for our own needs, for our family’s needs, to prove to or assure ourselves and others, for our own insecurities, for survival, society expectation or image - works that drown us and are never over and never ever enough.

To us Jesus is saying that “I am here. I have come all the way, to serve, to free you from that bondage, to give you true rest”. Tim Keller said, "Sabbath reminds us to preach our heart, “My work does not define me, Christ’s work defines me.” You are not God He is. We are not the ones who keep the world running. God is. We are not the one meeting our own needs, God is. He is enough. What a call to trust him.”

Without the cross, the law can only make you ‘rest’ externally, like for the Pharisee,  but your heart can totally remain restless. Because of the cross, the Sabbath is no longer an external restriction, but an internal freedom. Human sinful nature twists good things into bad things. Only through the cross we are given the power to untwist it. The cross has turned the Sabbath from a heavy burden into an eternal relief for our soul. Only and only when you see things through the Cross and trust in Jesus’ finished work, we are enabled to remain faithful to handle those good things, and put them where they are supposed to be.

Anything we do without the light of the Cross will just run back to the circle like this story with Pharisees. The good news of the Gospel is the constant calibration we need to keep our heart checked so that we can live in the freedom God has given us.  Over and over again, like tuning in a guitar.

I will close with this. I came across a post on my IG, an account for Biblical motherhood, called Meagan. She said this. One common mistake in parenting is focusing only on the behaviour without pointing them to God’s truth. Kids might learn the rules, but completely miss the reason behind them. We want to get into their heart and get to the root, because beneath those behaviour lies a deeper heart issue. It’s so much more than being “well behaved”. It is through God’s word, our kids are able to see that obedience isn’t just about pleasing Mum and Dad, it is about honouring the Lord. And for us, parents, parenting isn’t about memorising perfect scripts. It is about faithfully bringing God’s truth and grace into every day moments. Day in and day out. Again and again, and again. That’s how these little hearts are shaped.

When I read that, I thought, wow, that’s exactly like our life in Christ. That’s how we live in the gospel - by remembering the “who”, so that we won’t miss out on what’s most important.

In our sin, we see WHO our greatest problem is against, the Lord Himself.

In our repentance, we see WHO has died in our place and done the ultimate exchange on our behalf.

In our walk with Christ, we are to constantly look to WHO we have the relationship with, constantly learn to preach what He says to our heart again and again and again in everyday moments.

Of course, we will fail, we will make mistakes along the way, we will turn lots of good things around into bad. Just like a kid’s learning process under the gracious supervision of his imperfect parents, we have a merciful and faithful God, the perfect Father, who will always be ready to embrace us and help us when we fall. May we always remember the “who”, that we won’t miss out on what’s most important.

Let’s pray.

Discussion questions:

1. What struck you the most from the sermon?
2. Can you see the tendency in you to turn good things into bad things? Give examples.
3. What does it mean when Jesus said, "I am the lord of the Sabbath"? What relevance does it have to us today?
4. How does Jesus give us the true Sabbath?
5. What are the things you can do in your life to keep the Sabbath day?