Matthew 12:1-21: The Judgement of the Servant

Introduction: What’s a good way to spend a Saturday?

I’m sure that you love your days off. I’m sure you know what you love doing in your own time. Although, you may occasionally engage in the ‘day off’ volleyball, saying to your loved ones, “What do you want to do?”, “I don’t know, what do you want to do?”, “I don’t know, what do you want to do”, ad nauseum.

What is a good way to spend your day off? One person’s rest is another person’s labour. But we will see that there will be some options for Jesus, his followers, and the religious leaders. And Jesus’ interaction with them will show us the true meaning of having a day off.

We pick up the story again with Jesus traveling through Galillee. It’s a sabbath day, a Saturday, the rest day for the Jewish nation. Six days they were to work, but the seventh, the Saturday, was and is a rest day (Deut 5:12ff). Everyone was to rest: children, servants, animals, refugees, fields.

Picking your lunch? (vv. 1-8)

Jesus and his followers are walking through a field. Perhaps they’re on their way to church, synagogue (see v. 9). The disciples are hungry, so they reach out and pick the heads of grain, rub them in their hands, blow away the husks, and eat the grain as they walk along.

The issue wasn’t that they were stealing. The law of Moses allowed people to pick grain with their hands as they went through someone else’s field.[1] The issue was, could they do it on that day, the Saturday, the rest day? Jesus didn’t mind his followers doing this, but the Pharisees took a different view. Verse 2:

When the Pharisees saw this, they said to him, “Look! Your disciples are doing what is unlawful on the Sabbath.”

And so starts a round of debating and argument about the Sabbath. What are you allowed to do on the Sabbath? What aren’t you allowed to do on the Sabbath?

The Pharisees say “you aren’t allowed to pick your lunch”. What will Jesus say?

Jesus’ first response is to say to the Pharisees, “Go back and read the Bible. Let me give you some Bible precedent”, says Jesus. And Jesus refers them to 1 Samuel 21. This is the story of David, the anointed Christ, the Old Testament Messiah, the king waiting to receive his kingdom. But king Saul attempted to kill him, so David escaped, and ran away. Driven out of the country, on the way into exile he goes to the tabernacle, the tent of Yahweh, the predecessor to the temple. David asks the high priest for bread, because he and his companions were hungry. Now it is probable that the day David turned up at the doorstep of the house of God was a Saturday, the Sabbath. [2] This is likely because Saturday was the day the priests replaced the bread on the table in the tabernacle (Lev 24:5-9). David asks for bread, because he is hungry. And the priest gives him this bread for him and his men.

But hang on! David’s not a priest. Nor are any of his men. Yet they eat the bread reserved for priests. The men’s hunger and need outweighed the ceremonial law, for God is a God of mercy, and desires mercy, not harshness, not sacrifice. That is Jesus’ point. God desires mercy, not sacrifice. The Sabbath is given by God to give people rest, to make life easier, not to make life harder.

But there is more to Jesus’ argument, because then Jesus asks “What was the priest doing?” Every Sabbath, Yahweh commanded the priests to put fresh hot bread on the table in the tent—fresh, hot bread baked that very morning. In other words, look at that, the priests are working on the Sabbath, baking bread, putting it on the table, taking the old bread away, eating it at a holy place, and all this commanded by the Lord God Yahweh himself. So Jesus says in verse 5:

Or haven’t you read in the Law that on the Sabbath the priests in the temple desecrate the day and yet are innocent.

The priests did all kinds of ‘work’ on the Sabbath. They offered sacrifices (Nu 28:9-10), they baked bread, they did other things. Therefore, on Jesus’ reckoning, picking your lunch on Saturday is OK. David the Christ did the same. The priests did the same. So Jesus’ disciples are in good company.

Well, the controversy starts off as an argument about what you do on Saturday, but by the end of the interaction, Jesus has turned the debate into something about him. This is typical Jesus, egocentric, the world revolves around him. “This is not about you, Sharon!” “Yes it is”, responds Jesus, “it is an argument all about me!” Look at verse 6:

I tell you that one greater than the temple is here.

Jesus of course is talking about himself. Jesus is greater than the temple. Jesus displaces the temple as the place to meet God. And so it follows that Jesus is greater than the priests who serve in the temple. He is greater than king David who went to the temple in search of aid. It is as if Jesus is saying, “I am greater than the whole Old Testament sacrificial system, all the priests, all the ritual, all the animal sacrifices, the whole magnificent temple complex. I am the Man. I am the Greatest.” So look with me at verse 8:

For the Son of Man is Lord of the Sabbath.

The ‘Son of Man’ sounds like a humble title, but appearances can be deceptive, for Jesus is referring to Daniel 7 verses 13 and 14, where Daniel says:

There before me was one like a son of man, coming with the clouds of heaven. He approached the ancient of Days and was led into his presence. He was given authority, glory and sovereign power; all peoples, nations and men of every language worshipped him. His dominion is an everlasting dominion that will not pass away, and his kingdom is one that will never be destroyed.

Not surprisingly, then, Jesus claims himself “Lord of the Sabbath”. He is worshipped. The Ancient of Days has given him authority over everything, including the Sabbath.

Do you see the egocentricity of Jesus? Do you see his huge claims? His egocentricity is not just expressed in a verse here, a throw away line there, that can be explained away. His own identity as the most important person in the universe is the very rationale of his radical actions. His claims are the fabric of the New Testament. Either throw out the New Testament, or worship Christ as one greater than the temple, the Lord of the Sabbath.

Healing a Man in Church? (vv. 9-13)

The fight started off in the field on the way to church. Now it moves indoors. Jesus goes into their synagogue, and the Pharisees see an opportunity. There is present a man with a withered hand. “Ahh”, thinks the Pharisees, “what good bait he is for Jesus!” Here is a difficult case. Perhaps Jesus will say the man should be healed on the Sabbath, and then he will have broken the law. So they question him.

Is it lawful to heal on the Sabbath.

In his answer, Jesus points to what the men surrounding him would do. Every man there would save a sheep on the Sabbath. How much more should a man be restored? They would save a sheep, but a man is made in the image of God, and a sheep is not. So Jesus declares:

Therefore, it is lawful to do good on the Sabbath.

And then Jesus heals the man, restoring his hand to full health.

So what are the things that Jesus considers lawful on the Sabbath? Picking grain because you’re hungry is OK. And healing a man is fine.

Plotting a murder? (v. 15)

And what do the Pharisees consider lawful on the Sabbath? They think that plotting a murder is OK on the Sabbath. Verse 15:

But the Pharisees went out and plotted how they might kill Jesus.

Here we see how twisted Jesus’ opponents have become. So zealous have they become for the Sabbath law, that they resent Jesus healing a man for whom the Sabbath was made. So zealous are they that they miss the point that plotting murder is sin, no matter what day of the week it is done. Here is the Pharisees’ hypocrisy: they think it is wrong to heal a man on the Sabbath, an act which restores life, but they think it is OK to plot to kill a man, an act which destroys life.

How much more worse is plotting to kill on the Sabbath than healing a man?

But perhaps that’s OK. Perhaps it is OK for the Pharisees to go out and plot to kill Jesus on the Sabbath. Oh, they always meant it for evil. Their murderous plot cannot be seen as anything other than evil.

But God might bring good out of it. In fact, perhaps they are doing good on the Sabbath. They are planning the death of the Servant, the suffering servant of Yahweh.

Servant of Yahweh, Hope of the Nations (vv. 17-21)

For that is who Jesus is: the servant of Yahweh. Matthew translates for us Isaiah 42:1-4, the first of Isaiah’s so called “Servant Songs”. And for Matthew, Jesus is the fulfillment of everything that the servant would be. He is the chosen, beloved one. “This is my Son, whom I love”, said the voice from heaven at Jesus’ baptism (Matt 3:17). “I will put my Spirit on him”, said God, for that is also what happened to Jesus at his baptism.

But Isaiah tells us that the servant is a paradox, as the last bit of verses 18 and 19 show:

¹⁸I will put my Spirit on him, and he will proclaim justice to the nations. ¹⁹He will not quarrel or cry out, no one will hear his voice in the streets

Here is the one who proclaims justice, but no one will hear his voice in the streets. That is a paradox. Far away nations will hear him, but he will not cry out. Try that one day. Proclaim something and at the same time be silent. Yet that is what the servant is being said to do. This is the paradox of the Jesus. He claims these massive things for himself—greater than the temple, Lord of the Sabbath, Son of Man—yet he doesn’t push himself forward, he doesn’t make his name great. Look at verses 15 and 16:

Aware of this [that the Pharisees want to kill him], Jesus withdrew from that place. Many followed him and he healed all their sick, warning them not to tell who he was.

Jesus is the mighty Son of Man, Lord of the Sabbath, greater than the temple. His name is, in verse 21, the one in which the far away nations will put their hope. Yet he does not raise his voice or cry out. And he warns the healed, “Do not proclaim my name.”

Why? Why is this the way of the servant? Why does he do things in such a strange way? He is great, he is Lord, he is beloved, he is the one who leads justice to victory. Yet he is servant, he is quiet. Is this just contradiction, inconsistency, some sort of Jekel and Hide split personality? No. For the servant is Lord. Every Lord is his servant. For he is Lord by serving. And he proclaims by being quiet. He sends his voice to the ends of the earth by not raising his voice. He wins by losing. He conquers by dying. He saves by being killed.

That is the way God does things. When the religious leaders spend their rest day plotting to kill him, Jesus withdraws and lets them do their work in peace. They have important word to do. So he withdraws. Because it is this work, the work of killing the servant, that will bring rest. Sure, the Pharisees meant it for evil, but God meant it for good. And it is lawful to do good on the Sabbath.

And when this plotting reaches its completion, Jesus still remains quiet. At his trial, he is quiet. He amazes both high priest and governor. They ask him “Are you not going to answer? Don’t you hear what they are saying against you?” (Matt 26:62, 27:12-13).

For Jesus wins the victory by losing. He saves by dying. And for this, we gentiles who have put out hope in him will thank God into eternity.

Amen.

[1] If you enter your neighbour’s grainfield, you may pick kernels with your hands, but you must not put your sickle to his standing grain.

[2] The probability is admitted by Davies and Allison, Matthew: ICC, 2:308; France admits the possibility: Matthew: TNTC, 202.