All right, we'll be in Luke chapter
6, our beginning of chapter 6 this morning. And we're just going
to cover the first five verses this morning. And we'll read those right now.
And it came to pass on the second Sabbath after the first. that
he went through the cornfields and his disciples plucked the
ears of corn and did eat, rubbing them in their hands. And certain
of the Pharisees said unto them, why do you that which is not
lawful to do on the Sabbath days? And Jesus answering them said,
have you not read so much as this, what David did when himself
was an hungered? and they which were with him,
how he went into the house of God, and did take and eat the
showbread, and gave also to them that were with him, which it
is not lawful to eat, but for the priests alone. And he said
unto them, that the Son of Man is Lord also of the Sabbath.
And so as we begin this portion of our lesson, Luke chapter 6
has quite a lot of things in it. And the Sabbath comes up
about 18 times in the book of Luke. And we find a couple of
mentions of it here in chapter 6. And I thought it would be
good to review back a little bit about what we learned in
chapter 4 when we looked at our first lesson on the Lord of the
Sabbath. Remember, He went into Capernaum,
and that name Capernaum meant a walled city, a city of comfort,
comfortable walls. It kind of gave us the idea of
how we are in nature, in our natural self, we're comfortable
there. And how it said he went in on
Sabbath days and taught them. And then we went into our series
on astonishing doctrines of the very things that he taught them
concerning himself. And we looked at a couple in
Luke and beginning at Moses and all the prophets, he expounded
unto them the things concerning himself. and in all the scriptures,
the things concerning himself. And that's kind of been our guideline
on the Old Testament. All the scriptures are telling
us something about Christ. And so this Sabbath becomes very
important because it's the essential gospel of the finished work of
Christ. Today's lesson comes to us from
this part that Jesus quotes here from 1 Samuel chapter 21. But we're going to focus a little
bit on the Sabbath first, just to make sure that our understanding
is clear on that. that we learned that he taught
on several Sabbaths. And indeed, as we get to chapter
6, verse 6, it said, and it came to pass also on another Sabbath
that he entered into the synagogue and taught. And so, a common
thing there. So, we looked at some of the
things that he typically taught. And the purpose of the Sabbath
was to set aside a time to reflect on the finished work of Christ. And this finished work was so
important that it came to us from Genesis chapter 2 and verse
1 through 5. We read, Thus the heavens and
the earth were finished, and all the host of them. And on
the seventh day God ended His work which He had made, and He
rested." That Hebrew word Shabbat, from where we get Sabbath, on
the seventh day from all His work which He had made. And God
blessed the seventh day and sanctified it because in it He had rested,
or it means He had ceased. from all his work, which God
created and made. And we learned that, you know,
God, his work of everything was finished. We had the Lamb slain
from before the foundation of the world in eternity. the purpose
and will of God. Everything was by His design.
And if we read on further in Genesis, we found that He created
every plant of the field before it was in the earth, and every
herb in the field before it grew. And so it is with the lamb slain
from before the foundation of the world. It was in the mind
and heart of God from all eternity. the thing that would be the satisfaction,
the thing that would be the redemption of the people that He gave Christ
in the covenant of grace. And it was all finished. And the purpose of the Sabbath
was for man to reflect on this finished work of the Lord and
to celebrate this this primary element of the Gospel and that
Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures. It is finished. And there was nothing left to
be done by anyone. He had taken care of it all.
The finished work satisfied God the Father and that alone, and
nothing else but the finished work of His own Son. I love that
song. Nothing could for sin atone. Nothing but the blood of Jesus.
There's no other thing that satisfies God. And we get the news that
He's satisfied by that from Isaiah 53.11. He shall see the travail
of His soul and shall be satisfied. Just, I looked that word satisfied
up in my Webster's online dictionary this morning and sometimes it
gives the idea of a requirement has been met and
nothing more needs to be done. If you go to the bank and get
a loan and you pay that loan off, the requirement of that
debt is satisfied. And you don't have to do anything
else. You don't have to pay any more. You don't have to do anything
else. If you're hungry and you go eat
a big meal, your appetite is satisfied. You don't need to
eat anything else. You're full. You're satisfied. And so this satisfaction of God
is so important because He is satisfied with the sacrifice
of His Son on behalf of the people. and that they should enter into
the rest of that sacrifice as it tells us in Hebrews chapter
4. He that has entered into his
rest has ceased from his own works from Hebrews chapter 4
verse 10 there. And so the Sabbath was very important
from a spiritual standpoint. And to impress on everyone the
seriousness of relying totally on Christ for salvation, in Exodus
31, 15 it says, six days may work be done, but in the seventh
it is the Sabbath of rest. Holy unto the Lord, whosoever
doeth any work in the Sabbath day, he shall surely be put to
death." So anybody that does a work that negates the finished
work of Christ, It equals death. Works equals death. It's pretty
plain formulation there. The spiritual application is
very plain. There's a way that seemeth right
to a man, but those ways are the ways of death. The way of
works. And from Proverbs chapter 14,
verse 12. And so it's emphasized this the spiritual
nature of the Sabbath. You know, it's interesting from
our lesson in Habakkuk from our pastor, in verse 5 of chapter
1, where the Lord says, you know, I'll work a work in your days
which you will not believe, though it be told you. And that's what
this Sabbath is telling. It's telling the Gospel. And
yet, it's just not believable until the Lord exercises sovereignty
in your life and breathes into you the breath of life and regeneration. So as we look in this chapter
here, this true purpose of the Sabbath here taught by the Lord
of the Sabbath, was to rest in the finished work of Christ.
And yet, there's so much more here. You know, in Colossians 2, verse
16 said the Sabbath was a shadow of things to come. A declaration
of Christ. And He said, let no man judge
you in meat or drink, or in respect of the holy day, or the new moon,
or the Sabbath days. which are a shadow of things
to come, but the body is of Christ. And what we find going on is
that the ceremony itself, the legalism of the Sabbath became
the central thing. It became more important than
what it represented. It became, the doing of it became
more important than recognizing who it was even about. And as
we see here, the Pharisees, the legalists, they're so upset because
Christ is doing something on a Sabbath day, or He's allowing
something to be done on a Sabbath day, or He's not stopping something
that shouldn't be done on a Sabbath day. And they're always waiting
for Him as You know, as we get into this
next block of Scripture in chapter 6, they were waiting to see what
He would do on the Sabbath day so they might have something
to accuse Him of. And it's sad that that was their
aim. Their aim was not to look at...
It's funny that it says, well, you people that are sick and
have diseases and demons and stuff, there's six days for you
to come and be healed. Not on the Sabbath day though.
The very day where they should be entering into the total reliance
on Christ for salvation. Nope, can't do it on that day.
But the other six days is fine. It's like they pay no attention
to what's actually being done that shows who Christ was. It's just all about the day,
and it's something that religion gets kind of caught up in. You
know, I always like what our pastor says, hey, you know, if
we couldn't get together and worship the Lord on Sunday, well,
we do it on Monday, or we do it on Tuesday, or sometimes we
do it on Wednesday, sometimes we do it on Friday. But it's
not the day that's so important as what we do. It's the praising and thanking
God for what He has done, not the specific day of the week
or the month or the moon that we do it in. And so with that,
we come to this next segment here and this instant where we
have such a sweet picture of the grace of God as Christ and
the disciples move through this this field ready to harvest.
It says they went through the cornfield. Well, it's not really
corn. The other night we had corn on the cob. It's not really
corn like that. It's a grain. In the Strongs,
if you looked that up, it would just be a standing field of grain. And likely, it was this time
of year, it would have been a barley grain harvest. It would have
been the first fruits again. We'll look at that in a moment,
but remember it says in verse 1 there, this was the second
Sabbath after the first. And so this would have been from
the Feast of Weeks and the First Fruits Harvest that's talked
about in the Old Testament there. And as we read in this passage of
Scripture, we find these legalist religious folks entirely absorbed
in the works of the law. And as Christ said in Matthew
23, they were omitting the weightier matters of the law, the judgment,
the mercy, the faith, and focusing entirely on just the
legal physical part of it. And so they went through this
field of grain and a certain of the Pharisees said to them,
why do you that which is not lawful to do on the Sabbath days?
Well, They weren't supposed to do any servile work on the Sabbath
day, but certain things were allowed that had to be done,
and the Lord brings that up to them all the time. Well, what
if one of your livestock gets away on the Sabbath day? You're
going to go out and find it, and you're not going to condemn
anybody to death for going out and finding their lost sheep. And he talks to these legalists
and he says, haven't you even read the Scriptures? Haven't
you read this? You're so caught up in what Moses
said, well, what's it say in Samuel? It says, have you not
read what David did when he was hungered? And they were with
him. And you know, those who were tasked with reading the
scriptures, and as our job is, is to declare the gospel that's
contained in them. They're as much as we can see.
And we're always looking for Christ in them because He said
He expounded to them in all the Scriptures the things concerning
Himself. So we just have to go from that basic point that He's
there, and we just have to pray that He reveals Himself to us
in them. So they were tasked with the
reading of the Scriptures and declaring the Gospel to the people.
And no doubt they'd read these in the physical sense, but they
didn't have much of an understanding given to them of the deep spiritual
truths contained therein. And have you not read so much
as this? And then and now, the ceremony
was more important than what it represented. And as this Old
Testament illustration that the Lord refers to gives us the case
of David, who was a a type of Christ. We have some show bread
explained to us, which by law was twelve loaves of ceremonial
bread that was set apart for the service of God in the tabernacle. And every week they took those
loaves out and put twelve new loaves in. And the priest got
the old bread and At this time, they would have been worshiping
in the tabernacle that is talking about 1 Samuel chapter 21 is
where this comes from. And let's just read those six
verses it talks about from 1 Samuel chapter 21. Then came David to
Nob to Ahimelech the priest. And Ahimelech was afraid at the
meeting of David, and said unto him, Why art thou alone, and
no man with thee? And you remember if you read
back, if you remember back from our studies in Samuel from our
pastor, that Saul was out to get David, and Jonathan, his
son, was a friend of David, and they had parted just before this.
And Saul was trying to kill David. And David was kind of on the
run. And a hymn like the priest says, Why
art thou alone, and no man with thee? And I think he had some
men with him, but they just weren't in there with him at this point. But they were alone. David, he
kind of tells a little lie here. It's kind of like Joseph. You
meant it for evil, but God meant it for good to save much people
alive kind of a thing. David says, well, the king hath
commanded me a business, and hath said unto me, Let no man
know anything of the business. Whereabout I send thee and what
I have commanded thee, and I have appointed my servants to such
and such a place. Well, Saul didn't even know where
he was. He was trying to find out where he was so he could
off him. But isn't that a picture of Christ? The king hath commanded
me a business. Remember, Jesus said, I must
be about my Father's business. And He was always about that. So now in verse 13 of chapter
21 of 1 Samuel, Now therefore, what is under thine hand? Give
me five loaves of bread in mine hand, or what there is present.
And the priest answered David and said, There's no common bread
under mine hand, but there is hallowed bread." And then he
says, okay, we have some bread, but here's a religious thing.
Here's a rule. If the young men have kept themselves
at least from women, and David answered the priest and said
unto him, of a truth, women have been kept from us about these
three days since I came out, and the vessels of the young
men are holy, and the bread is in a common manner, yea, though
it were sanctified this day in the vessel. So it kind of lets
us know that there were some men with him, and the priest
says, Well, you can have some bread, but you must be circumcised. You can have the bread of life,
but you must be circumcised. Kind of more religious rules
that they try to impose. So, the priest gave him hallowed
bread, for there was no bread there but the show bread, the
bread of life, that was taken from before the Lord, put hot
bread in the day when it was taken away, or they replaced
it every week with new bread. a picture of the bread of life
and the need for it, but kind of being blocked by religious
foolishness there. And Jesus said, this is the bread
that come down from heaven that a man may eat thereof and not
die. And It's interesting in Matthew's
account of this same scripture that we're reading here in Luke
and Matthew chapter 12 and verse 3, that he said unto them, have
you not read what David did when he was in hunger, and they that
were with him, how he entered into the house of God and did
eat the showbread which was not lawful for him to eat, neither
for them which were with him, but only for the priests? Or
have you not read in the law how that on the Sabbath day the
priest and the temple profane the Sabbath and are blameless?
They have duties to proclaim it every day there in the temple. And yet, technically, if they
looked at it the same way they looked at everything else, that
would have been a violation of the Sabbath rules. But I say
unto you that in this place is one greater than the temple. But if you had known what this
meaneth, I will have mercy and not sacrifice, you wouldn't have
condemned the guiltless. For the Son of Man is Lord even
of the Sabbath day." It's kind of the same thing he said before.
You omit the weightier things of mercy and justice and faith
and focus on the physical things. It's not the ceremony, but the
true picture of the gospel of the finished work of Christ. And that God was satisfied by that. And, you know, there's another
level of instruction here. You know, it's always interesting
with the Lord. He says something, And as you peel back, kind of
like peeling back the onion, there's just layer, after layer,
after layer, after layer thing. There's always more to Him than
we imagine. He's more magnificent than we
can imagine. He's more wonderful. Remember
from our lesson on the rainbow, the manifold wisdom of God was
We can only see like the seven primary colors, but there's like
an infinite amount of colors. It's a picture of His grace.
And so as we look at this second level of what I'm getting out
of it anyway, this Luke brings to our attention. He's the only
one that mentions this fact here. This gospel is recorded in Matthew
and Mark also, but Luke is the one that brings to our attention
that it was that second Sabbath after the first when this episode
takes place. And it's significant because
it brings to our attention the Feast of Weeks and Pentecost,
the Feast of Firstfruits. What a picture of these disciples
He's about to call some of them out to be apostles here a little
bit later in this chapter. They're going through this field
ready to harvest and they're plucking some of the grain and
they're rubbing it between their hands to get rid of the hole,
the chaff of it. They could just blow in their
hand and the husk part would blow away and the grain would
be left in their palm and they could munch that down. You'd
have to munch a lot of wheat to satisfy yourself. But anyway, lute brings us to
our attention. It was likely the barley harvest.
It was the feast of first fruits. This was brought up in Leviticus
chapter 23, starting in verse nine. The Lord spake unto Moses saying,
speak unto the children of Israel and say unto them, when you come
into the land which I give you, you shall reap the harvest thereof. Then shall you bring a sheaf
of the first fruits of your harvest unto the priest. and he shall
count down unto you from tomorrow after the Sabbath, from the day
that you brought the sheaf of the wave offering, seven Sabbaths
shall be complete." So there would have been seven Sabbaths.
And then following that would have been Pentecost. The 50th
day would have been Pentecost. And we could read about that
in Acts 1-2. And they had to offer the lambs for sacrifice. And at the end of it it says,
And you shall proclaim on the selfsame day that it will be
a holy convocation unto you, that you shall do no servile
work therein. It shall be a statute forever
in all your dwellings for generations. That's Sabbath. And so we had
this Second Sabbath after the first, we have the Lord leading
his disciples through this grain field ready for harvest. It won't
be long here. Hopefully we'll be heading off
to eastern Oregon to go do some hunting. And I'm always amazed
when we go over that way. We just go through millions of
acres, it seems like, of wheat. just as far as the eye can see.
And I was reading this morning that last year Oregon planted
740,000 acres of wheat. And they get about 68 bushels
per acre. And you get about 90 loaves of
whole wheat bread from a bushel. So that would be about 6,120
loaves of bread from an acre of wheat. times 740,000 acres. That feeds a lot of folks. That's
pretty impressive. And for refined flour, for white
bread, it's about half that much. They get about half the amount
of bread out of it for white bread. But wheat bread, they
get about 90 loaves per acre. So imagine that compared to these
guys going through this wield and they just grab a handful
of wheat heads and stroke them off there in their hand and then
rub them together and they get a little tablespoon, maybe a
grain in their hand. Just the picture of the Lord,
the bread of life. They're separating these ears
in their hands and separating the chaff from the wheat. I think
in our previous lesson we read from Jeremiah chapter 23. And he's talking about kind of
a similar set of circumstances. Here in this case, you have the
Pharisees that are saying, this is legalism. This is what you're
not supposed to do. This is religion. Do this. Do that. Don't do this. Don't
do that. Here's all the rules. And if
you do all that, then you get some measure of self-righteousness.
You get some measure of supposed self-salvation through
it. And it's just a lie that they
were perpetrating on the people there. And in Jeremiah 23, he's
saying the same thing. These prophets are out there
telling lies. And he says, What is the chaff
to the wheat? Is not my word like a fire, saith
the Lord, and like a hammer that breaketh the rock in pieces?
Therefore, behold, I'm against the prophets, saith the Lord,
that steal my words, every one from his neighbor. Behold, I'm
against the prophets, saith the Lord, that use their tongues
and say, he saith." And that's what they're doing here. They're
missing the spiritual application of it. But they're saying, well,
Moses said, don't do this and don't do that. So they're teaching
the wrong thing there. And they eat of it as David illustrated. It was bread set apart for the
service of God. And as they go through there
and pluck here some and there some, and they're just kind of
wandering through it. Just kind of reminds me of The
way the Gospel is, you know, the Gospel call goes out everywhere
and here comes a stalk of wheat, here comes one over here. That chaff of the old religion
is rubbed off. That chaff of self-righteousness
gets rubbed off by the Gospel. blown away. And what's left is
the bread of life and the gospel. And so they go through there
and remember in our study in chapter five, he was gathering
up those disciples and took them out on that boat and said, throw
down your net. And they threw over the net and
he says, get ready for a draw. Get ready for a haul. And then
later on he says, I'm going to make you fishers of men. You're
going to be instrumental in declaring the gospel and bringing in the
sheep, bringing in the people of the Lord. And so launch out
in the deep and let down your nets for a haul. And it kind
of reminded me of what it says in Matthew 9, Matthew 9, verse
35 through 38. And we'll close there for today. And Jesus went about all the
cities and villages teaching in their synagogues and preaching
the gospel of the kingdom and healing every sickness and every
disease among the people. But when he saw the multitudes,
he was moved with compassion on them because they fainted
and were scattered abroad as sheep having no shepherd. Then
saith he to his disciples, The harvest truly is plenteous, but
the laborers are few. Pray therefore the Lord of the
harvest that he will send forth laborers into his harvest." And
I think that's just a spiritual picture. He was walking through
his harvest and he had sent these laborers through to pick grain
here and a grain there. through the gospel to rub off
that chaff of the old religion and with a religion of works.
and to make them enter into the rest, the Sabbath of rest, of
the finished work of Christ as He died for the sins of His people. So we'll stop there, and next
time you find him teaching on the Sabbath again. Boy, he's
an aggravating guy. And not only does he teach them
on the Sabbath stuff that they couldn't understand, he heals
another guy that's had a withered hand. Just no end to it. So we'll stop there. Thank you
for your attention. And as always my friends be free
Thank you Mike, you're welcome Hi Andrew. Hello, how are you? Good. Hi Betty.