Matthew 12:8

LORD OF THE SABBATH

‘The Son of man is Lord even of the sabbath day.’

Matthew 12:8

The one great subject which stands out prominently in the opening verses of this chapter is the Sabbath Day. It is a subject on which strange opinions prevailed among the Jews in our Lord’s time; it is a subject on which divers opinions have often been held in the Churches of Christ, and wide differences exist among men at the present time. Let us see what we may learn about it from our Lord’s teaching.

I. The Lord did not abrogate the observance of a weekly Sabbath Day.—He only freed it from incorrect interpretations, and purified it from man-made additions. He did not tear out of the decalogue the fourth commandment: He only stripped off the miserable traditions with which the Pharisees had incrusted the day, and by which they had made it, not a blessing, but a burden. He left the fourth commandment where he found it,—a part of the eternal law of God, of which no jot or tittle was ever to pass away. May we never forget this!

II. The Lord allows all work of real necessity and mercy.—This is a principle which is abundantly established. We find our Lord justifying His disciples for plucking the ears of corn on a Sabbath: it was an act permitted in Scripture (Deuteronomy 23:25). We find Him maintaining the lawfulness of healing a sick man on the Sabbath Day (Matthew 5:10). We ought never to rest from doing good.

III. Why?—The arguments by which our Lord supports the lawfulness of any work of necessity and mercy on the Sabbath, are striking and unanswerable. He reminds the Pharisees, who charge Him and His disciples with breaking the law, how David and his men, for want of other food, had eaten the holy shew-bread out of the tabernacle. Above all, He lays down the great principle that no ordinance of God is to be pressed so far as to make us neglect the plain duties of charity. ‘I will have mercy and not sacrifice.’

IV. Avoid low views of the sanctity of the Christian Sabbath.—Let us not abuse the liberty which He has so clearly marked out for us, and pretend that we do things on the Sabbath from ‘necessity and mercy,’ which in reality we do for our own selfish gratification. There is great reason for warning people on this point. The Pharisee pretended to add to the holiness of the day; the Christian is too often disposed to take away from that holiness, and to keep the day in an idle, profane, irreverent manner. To give the Sabbath to idleness, pleasure-seeking, or the world, is utterly unlawful.

—Bishop J. C. Ryle.

Illustration

‘Lord Macaulay, in a speech on the Factory Acts, illustrates the value of a day of rest: “Man, man is the great instrument that produces wealth. The natural difference between Campania and Spitsbergen is trifling when compared with the difference between a country inhabited by men full of bodily and mental vigour and a country inhabited by men sunk in bodily and mental decrepitude. Therefore it is that we are not poorer, but richer, because we have, through many ages, rested from our labour one day in seven. That day is not lost. While industry is suspended, while the plough lies in the furrow, while the exchange is silent, while no smoke ascends from the factory, a process is going on quite as important to the wealth of nations as any process which is performed in more busy days. Man, the machine of machines … is repairing and winding up, so that he returns to his labours on Monday with clearer intellect, with livelier spirits, with renewed corporal vigour.” ’