Sermon for Trinity 17
Ephesians 4:1-6 + Luke 14:1-11
Meekness and humility, patience and love. These are essential qualities and attitudes for those who would walk in the footsteps of Christ, for those who are called the children of God, as you heard Paul say in today’s Epistle. But humility and love are the very qualities and attitudes that were lacking among so many in Israel at the time of Jesus, as we see in today’s Gospel, and we need to be careful that they are not lacking among us Christians. So let’s turn to today’s Gospel and learn a Sabbath lesson in humility and love.
We start with the Sabbath lesson in love. Luke tells us that it was on a Sabbath Day that Jesus went to dinner at the home of a certain ruler of the Pharisees, and, as usual, they were watching him closely. They were watching Jesus closely to see if He would break the commandment to rest on the Sabbath. You see, the Pharisees had turned the Sabbath rest into the litmus test for Jewish orthodoxy, and Jesus hadn’t been playing along with their expectations. He had been healing people on the Sabbath, which they counted as “work.” In fact, on one occasion, He healed a crippled man on the Sabbath Day and then told the man to pick up the mat he had been lying on and carry it home, which, according to the Pharisees, was pure wickedness. Carrying a mat on the Sabbath Day, after letting someone heal you, on the Sabbath Day? How evil!
Well, there was a man present at this Sabbath dinner who had dropsy—a painful swelling of the limbs, and Jesus intended to heal the man. But He got out in front of the Pharisees and asked them point blank: Is it lawful to heal on the Sabbath? Let’s go back and review what the Law and the Prophets had to say about it.
The Sabbath Day fell on the 7th day of the week, which we call Saturday. The 7-day week goes back to the six-day creation plus the 7th day on which God rested, and it says that God blessed the seventh day and sanctified it. It may be that Adam and Eve devoted every 7th day of the week to worshiping God, but the truth is, we don’t know how or if the 7th day was observed in the early days of humanity; nothing more is said or commanded about the Sabbath Day until Moses gave the Law at Mt. Sinai.
So it was a brand new Law that God gave to Israel at Mt. Sinai: Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy. Six days you shall labor and do all your work, but the seventh day is the Sabbath of the LORD your God. In it you shall do no work: you, nor your son, nor your daughter, nor your male servant, nor your female servant, nor your cattle, nor your stranger who is within your gates. For in six days the LORD made the heavens and the earth, the sea, and all that is in them, and rested the seventh day. Therefore the LORD blessed the Sabbath day and sanctified it. Moses goes on a little later, The LORD spoke to Moses, saying, “Speak also to the children of Israel, saying: ‘Surely My Sabbaths you shall keep, for it is a sign between Me and you throughout your generations, that you may know that I am the LORD who sanctifies you. You shall keep the Sabbath, therefore, for it is holy to you. Everyone who profanes it shall surely be put to death; for whoever does any work on it, that person shall be cut off from among his people. Work shall be done for six days, but the seventh is the Sabbath of rest, holy to the LORD. Whoever does any work on the Sabbath day, he shall surely be put to death. Therefore the children of Israel shall keep the Sabbath, to observe the Sabbath throughout their generations as a perpetual covenant. It is a sign between Me and the children of Israel forever.
The Sabbath commandment was unique among the Ten Commandments. Resting on Saturday isn’t part of the moral Law, the universal principles, that God has written into the hearts of all men. For example, He never blames non-Israelites for failing to rest on Saturday, whereas He often blames non-Israelites for their moral failures: idolatry, murder, violence, dishonoring parents, adultery, stealing, lying, and coveting. Those things are always sinful and wrong by their very nature, because those things are always unloving practices and attitudes, whereas the Sabbath commandment, given to Israel only, was like the commandment of circumcision given to Abraham and his descendants, or like the commandment given to Adam and Eve only, not to eat from the fruit of that one tree in the Garden of Eden. Those ceremonial laws were imposed on a certain group of people, for a limited time, for a specific purpose.
And, some of those ceremonies could be set aside in case of necessity. For example, for as important as circumcision was in God’s ceremonial Law, the Israelites didn’t even circumcise their children during their 40 years of wilderness wandering, because they never knew how long they would be staying in each place in the desert. It was only when they were finally ready to enter the Promised Land that all the men were circumcised. Until then, the ceremony was set aside for the sake of necessity. Or, one time, David and his men were out of food, so the priest at the tabernacle gave them the show bread from the tabernacle, which, according to the ceremonial law, was only to be eaten by the priests. Again, the ceremony was set aside for the sake of necessity.
The Sabbath ceremony, too, could be set aside in case of necessity, because, as Jesus said on another occasion, The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath. In other words, God imposed a day of rest on them for their good, and as a sign of their love for God in obeying this special ceremonial law. But, if one of them needed surgery or rescuing on the Sabbath Day, or (as we’ll see in a moment) if one of their animals had an emergency on the Sabbath Day, it was the right thing to do, the loving thing to do, to set aside the ceremony in order to help the animal, or, even more, their fellow Israelite. Because love was the motivating principle, not the ceremony.
So now you can answer the question: Is it lawful to heal a man on the Sabbath? Absolutely! Because it was a ceremony, not a universal principle, and ceremonies can and must yield to love, and it was entirely loving to give a person relief from his or her suffering on the Sabbath. But the Pharisees, who were experts in the Law, remained silent and refused to answer Jesus’ question. Because, for them, love was never part of the equation. They never understood it. They never lived by it. For them, the worship of God was all about external works, especially ceremonies.
Well, Jesus didn’t wait for their permission. He healed the man and let him go. And then He tried to teach the lesson to the Pharisees: Which of you, if your ox or donkey fell into a pit, would not immediately pull it out on the Sabbath day? They all would! So, why would they deny healing to their fellow Israelite on the Sabbath? There the truth comes out: They would help their own animal on the Sabbath, because the animal had value to them. They didn’t want to see their brother helped, because their brother had no value to them. And so their despicable lack of love was exposed for all to see. And still they remained silent. Because they were stubborn and unteachable.
What about you? Are you teachable? If so, then learn how a lack of love, for God and for your neighbor, is the root of all disobedience to God’s commandments. Why does a child dishonor his parents? Because he doesn’t love God or his parents enough to honor them. Why do people steal? Because they don’t love God or their neighbor enough to respect their neighbor’s property. Why do people have sex outside of marriage or otherwise commit adultery? Because they don’t love God or their neighbor enough to respect God’s commands concerning sex and marriage. Why do people worship idols or invent ways to worship God? Because they don’t love God or His Word enough to worship Him according to His Word. It’s for this lack of love that all people deserve to be condemned by the God who is love, and who wants to surround Himself with people who are also characterized by love.
But because God is love, He sent His Son into the world to call sinners to repentance, to live and die in our place, and to bring us, by faith, back into God’s favor. Now the Spirit is at work in all those whom He has caused to be born again. And just as God once sanctified the Sabbath Day, setting it apart from all the other days of the week, so now He has sanctified and is sanctifying His believing children, permanently setting us apart from all the people of the world, to live a life that is more and more characterized by love.
Now, since I wanted to take some time to go over the Sabbath laws themselves, we only have a little time left to learn the Sabbath lesson in humility. But we can summarize it rather briefly.
On the same Sabbath day, in the same Pharisee’s house, Jesus watches as the guests all run to grab the seat of highest honest for themselves. Now, even from a human perspective, that was just dumb. Because, as Jesus points out in His lesson to them about the wedding banquet, what if the host of the banquet decides that someone else is more important than you? Then he’ll go up to you and tell you to leave that seat. He’ll give it to someone else. And you’ll be disgraced before all the guests and will have to move down to the lowest place. Better, wiser, to start at the lowest place, and then let the host see you there, and raise you up to a higher place, if He so chooses, and so honor you in the presence of everyone. Arrogance before men is foolishness; humility before men is wisdom.
But Jesus had a much more important lesson for the people to learn. He wasn’t really concerned with giving the people good advice for their wedding etiquette. It isn’t a human banquet that matters for eternity; it’s the banquet of God’s kingdom. It isn’t the honor given by a human host that matters; it’s the honor—or dishonor—given by God. Humility before man is wise. Humility before God is crucial. The Sabbath commandment itself was there to teach the Israelites humility before God, to submit their will to His will, to trust in Him to provide for them, and not in themselves and their work.
On both fronts, before God and before men, many in Israel failed to humble themselves. To be honest, everyone has failed. Our natural hearts don’t willingly submit to God’s will, or wait patiently for God to act, or trust in Him to do what is right. We want to take the reins of power for ourselves and insist that God do things our way. That’s nothing but pride. And before men, well, we always tend to think we deserve more, or better treatment, than the next guy. But all throughout the Scriptures, there is this constant warning for man to humble himself, to lower himself, not in a degrading kind of way or in false humility, but to learn the simple-but-profound lesson Jesus taught at the end of today’s Gospel. Whoever exalts himself will be humbled; and whoever humbles himself will be exalted.
And there we have both the warning and the promise, both the Law and the Gospel. Do not think too highly of yourself. Do not act as if you were the most important person in the room. Admit your sinfulness before God and, as you all confessed a little while ago, admit that “I deserve only Your wrath and punishment.” The Law calls you to repentance. And then believe the Gospel promise, that whoever humbles himself will be exalted, that God, purely out of His fatherly divine goodness and mercy, will raise you up, forgive you all your sins for Jesus’ sake, restore you to His favor, and even honor you before men.
Humility and love. Learn this Sabbath lesson from Jesus. Make every effort to live in humility and to act in love, and to preserve the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace. Amen.
