The Holy Ghost of our Lord Jesus Christ, according to Mark, one
Sabbath he was going through the grain fields, and as they made
their way, his disciples began to pluck heads of grain.
And the Pharisees, we are saying to him, look, why are they doing
what is not lawful on the Sabbath?
And he said to them, Have you never read what David did when
he was in need and was hungry, He and those who were with him,
how he entered the House of God in the time of abatha, the high
priest, and ate the bread of the presence, which is not lawful
for any but the priest to eat, and also gave it to those who
were with him. And he said to them, The Sabbath
was made for man, not man for the Sabbath.
So the Son of Man is Lord even of the Sabbath.
Again He entered the synagogue, and a man was there with a
withered hand, and they watched Jesus to see whether he would
heal him on the Sabbath, so that they might accuse him.
And he said to the man with the withered hand, Come here.
And he said to them, Is it lawful on the Sabbath to do good
or to do harm, to save life or to kill?
But they were silent. And he looked around at them
with anger, grieved at their hardness of heart, and say to
the man, Stretch out your hand. He stretched it out, and his
hand was restored. The Pharisees went out and
immediately held counsel with the Herodians against him.
How to destroy him? The gospel of the Lord?
Let's pray together, Lord, we pray now that just as you
brought the liberating power of the gospel to your disciples and
to the people who needed it on that day of Sabbath, we pray
that you would bring freedom for us, Lord, in whatever ways that
performance culture or rules based performance is gripping
our our lives, our, our, our families, our friends.
We pray, Lord, that the power and beauty and light of the
gospel would shine now into our hearts, into our church and into
our city. We pray this in the name of the
Father, Son and Holy Spirit, Amen.
And please be seated. We're returning to our series
that we started last fall called simply Jesus, and we're walking
through the Gospel of Mark section by section and looking
at the beauty, the power, simplicity of Jesus and his
gospel. So I admit you to turn there now
it's imprinted in your bulletins or turn there in there in your
turn there in your Bibles as well.
Mark 2 verses 23 through chapter 3, verse 6.
In high school, I attended a Christian School that was very
strict. Every day the men were to wear
ties, every day the women were to wear dresses or skirts of
appropriate length, and under no circumstances were the men or
the women to hold hands with one another.
I joined in my first year of this school.
I joined the puppeteering team. And we worked on and put on an
amazing show for the school. It was a banger.
It was a huge hit. It was a rare moment of fun.
But all the fun ended when our team was called into the chief
administrator's office because someone in the audience, one of
the authority figures, thought they heard one of the puppets
say the word. Darn, which was considered one
of those junior swear words. Now, if you're if you're on the
outside looking in on an environment like this, it's
hilarious. It's quirky and silly.
If you're on the inside, it does not feel funny.
It's heavy. It's super serious.
Lot is riding on these kinds of silly situations because behind
all the surface level behaviors that everyone is trying to keep,
there are these heart level questions like this.
Do I belong here? Am IA good person or a bad
person? Am I better than everyone else
or worse than everyone else? Does God approve of me?
Do others love me? Am I looked at or am I truly
seen? And whenever we try to answer
those questions, those deep questions with surface level
behavior, that is what we might call a performance culture.
And the behaviors might be different, but the questions are
pretty much the same. You know, human beings are are
basically of the same nature wherever you go.
And so my school environment's one example of performance
culture, but you might have your own story of a performance
culture. The preschool Co-op parents
group can be a performance culture.
So can the college dormitory. So can the sibling text thread,
right. So can the Zoom call with the
department heads, as you're talking about the quarterly
reviews. Where do we find ourselves,
like, playing silly little games to earn love and to prove
ourselves? Where do we find ourselves
jumping through kind of bizarre hoops to get approval from
certain people? Where have simple interactions
become kind of heavy and weighted and complicated and
sort of charged? As we'll see in our gospel
reading today, Jesus Christ came to set us free from performance
cultures and from slavery to performance cultures.
His gospel is the opposite of performance cultures.
It's simple, it's clear, it's life giving, it's honest.
He doesn't play our silly games, but He does answer the deep
questions of the heart that drive those silly games in the
1st place. He says in me you are forgiven,
in me you are loved, in the Father you belong, You are free.
And if you can just imagine whatever, whatever way in which
performance culture has gripped your heart or made life heavy,
imagine releasing that and just knowing that you could walk
free, that you could live a little bit more courageously,
and that you could actually let God's love fill the place of
heaviness that you carry around. The gospel of performance just
tends to suck the life out of people.
And Jesus Christ came to bring life abundantly and to relieve
us of everything that would weigh us down.
And I wonder if that's why he allowed the behavior in verse 23
of Mark 2. You can look there as it says,
Mark says this one Sabbath, he, Jesus was going through the
grain fields. And as they made their way, his
disciples began to pluck heads of grain.
Now, I don't know if you've ever plucked heads of grain before,
but they must have been pretty hungry to eat raw grain.
It was edible. Probably they would have
preferred like hot, fresh bread. But the heads of grain were, you
know, right there and they walked everywhere and there
probably didn't have a lot of like, food on hand, money on
hand. So here they have some kind of
sustenance. And there and there maybe they
give Jesus a look like, am I allowed to do this?
And maybe he smiles back at them and they just pluck it and eat
it and chew on it. And how that, how good that must
have tasted, how refreshing those heads of grain must have
tasted on a hot Palestinian day where you are just, you know,
needing something to fuel your ministry and your walk and
everything else. And, you know, I just imagine
Jesus. Jesus may have smiled.
Maybe he shrugged his shoulders. Maybe he raised his eyebrows
like he knew what was coming because the very next verse,
it's almost as if the Pharisees pop out of the grain fields.
They certainly are right there, verse 24, ready to catch them.
The Pharisees were saying to them, look, why are they doing
what is not lawful on the Sabbath?
Immediately, Pharisees, they notice an infraction.
It's a simple thing, just a basic thing.
Someone's just eating, you know, heads of grain, and they're
there and it's not lawful on the Sabbath.
You're breaking the rules. Their intention, their focus was
like, OK, it's the Sabbath, what are the rules?
What are the rules? But God's intention for the
Sabbath was not the rules. God's intention for Sabbath from
the very beginning was the rest. Sabbath rest, not Sabbath rules.
Rest for you, rest for me. For six days we we labor.
For six days we're carrying out hard labor.
But the 7th day we rest Why? Because God loves us, because
we're not slaves, because he he wants us to be filled with life.
That does mean that we don't work.
And so the question was like, what does not working mean?
And so some of the lawyers of the day were working really hard
to be like, OK, well, you can't skin a fish and you can't like,
you know, pluck heads of grain and you can't sort one thing
from the other. And there's all these things
that are not. But the focus was off of God's
love, off of the rest of Sabbath onto the rules of Sabbath.
And they're, they, they came up with like 30-9 different rules,
which were very, very specific. And their focus was on don't
break those. And ironically, Sabbath had
become the heaviest day of the week.
It was what they were so focused on.
And we go, why was Sabbath? Why were they so focused on the
rules? And we have to remember those
deep questions of the heart. Remember those those burning,
churning questions of the heart of do I belong and am I loved
and how do I rank and does God approve of me?
And just think, you know, the Pharisees, these are like
regular human beings just like you and me.
And you consider their situation.
You know, foreign armies had dominated their people like 1
after another for centuries. There's lots of generational,
you know, trauma and being shuffled around and moved
around. Their culture was despised,
their rights were taken away. And you know what?
The Sabbath was one of the only things that distinguished their
culture and their religion from other people.
It was one of the only things that they had.
It was central to their covenant.
It was central to their story. It's central to our story.
So of course they would care about it.
The problem was not the Sabbath. The problem was the pressure
that they put on the Sabbath and Sabbath rules and one another to
answer the deep questions that only the gospel can answer and
satisfy. The truth is, I've got some
Pharisee in me. Maybe you've got some Pharisee
in you. Where are we watching for those
infractions? Where does fairness matter more
to us than fullness of grace? Where does rules matter more to
us than rest, behavior more than belonging?
Do we like Santa Claus? Keep a naughty list?
Who's on the naughty list? How did they get there?
They ate the rest of the chocolate ice cream.
That's what they did. Or they got into credit card
debt. Shame on them.
They hurt my friend. They're on the naughty list.
They cut in line in Costco when clearly everyone is running late
and everyone's stressed. They said something offensive
and ignorant in the year 2026. The thing is, it's like not hard
to become an accidental Pharisee.
It's not hard to pop out of the bushes and say you did an
infraction. It is not lawful to say what you
said. It is not lawful to do what you
did, and you don't belong and you are not worthy of love
anymore. The thing is that we could all
use some of what Jesus brought which is this gospel freedom,
the simplicity and he provides it.
As the story continues in verse 25 Jesus responds to the
Pharisees accusation and he said to them, have you never read
what David did when he was in need and was hungry?
He and those who were with him, how he entered the House of God
in the time of Abbathar the high priest, and ate the bread of the
presence, which is not lawful for any but the priests to eat,
and also gave it to those who were with him.
Jesus is telling a story here from First Samuel 21 when David,
Israel's true king, was running for his life from Saul who was
literally trying to kill him. What did God do in that moment
for David? God provided a way for David to
stay alive. David was starving, his men were
starving, and so how did God provide for David?
God provided for David by giving him some of the bread that was
consecrated for the Levitical priests.
And according to ceremony law, only they could eat it.
But when David broke into this unholy site, not in Jerusalem,
but off site nevertheless, dedicated to God, the priest
gave him the consecrated bread. David ate it.
David shared some of it with his men.
And you know what? That was God's provision for
them. It meant they broke a ceremonial
rule, but they stayed alive and David fulfilled the greater
call, the greater, you know, path before him which which was
to simply live his life and eventually rule Israel and
become king. So here's the point.
Jesus says it in verse 27. The Sabbath was made for man and
women. The Sabbath was made for people,
not man for the Sabbath, not people for the Sabbath.
So the Son of Man, he's referring to himself is Lord
even over the even of the Sabbath.
The Son of Man is Lord even over the Sabbath.
Friends, listen, wherever Jesus is Lord, there is freedoms.
Jesus is Lord, and when he is Lord over a situation, he
restores it to God's life, giving love, God's life, giving
purposes, God's true heart for the Sabbath, which is it is for
people. Sabbath is God's container, his
fountain for pouring out life for his people.
It's not meant to be a sieve or a drain on people to suck the
life out of them and grind them into the ground.
It is not intended to be a burden.
It is intended to be a burden lifter.
And I wonder, what performative area of our life could we
declare Jesus Christ, the Son of Man, is Lord over this area,
over this performance culture? Where are their burdens or
pressures in our life to get things exactly right, to never
make a mistake? Can you imagine Jesus being Lord
over that area? Where are their judgements
against others from our own hearts, contempt for others,
where we could say Jesus is Lord over this situation, over this
judgement, over this, over this sense of rejection over other
people? Where are there silly games and
rigid rules that we're kind of caught up in?
We see others caught up in? Can you imagine saying Jesus is
Lord over this situation? It's for the benefit of people,
not the other way around. Ask Jesus to become Lord over
it, friends, and over you, and to fill your heart with freedom
and love and to lift the burden. And then things begin to change.
How do we know though? How do we know that the gospel
of Jesus is beginning to to transform our heart and give
freedom from performance cultures?
I think one test is this. How do we see people who have
nothing to offer us? How do we treat them?
How do we lift them up? And case in point is the man in
verse 1 of chapter 3. Here's a test case again.
He Jesus entered the synagogue and a man was there with a
withered hand. Now this is likely a long
standing condition for this man. We don't know why his hand was
was withered, as Mark called it. It could have been from an
injury and then maybe it was paralyzed and he couldn't use it
anymore. So could have been atrophy in
his hand. And maybe it was from birth,
maybe that he was born with a, a smaller hand or a, you know,
just a, you know, a hand that was paralyzed.
But in any case, he had a hand that he probably couldn't use
very much. In a manual labor economy.
This put him at a huge disadvantage.
So he couldn't perform the feats of strength that other men could
perform. And in a religious culture of
outward appearance, he would be diminished.
He wouldn't, his body wouldn't be whole as it were.
And so he would be in some ways kind of put off to the side.
He could still come into the synagogue and still clean
technically, but he would certainly not have been a
platform. He certainly would not have been
considered whole. Now, how did the Pharisee see
this man? Verse 2?
And they watched Jesus to see whether he would heal him on the
Sabbath so that they might accuse him, Accuse Jesus.
All the Pharisees saw in this man was an object.
Some might call him what's called an NPC.
You familiar with this phrase? A non player character.
He's just kind of like part of the game they're playing.
They don't actually see it. They're looking at him because
he's useful to their game, but they don't actually care about
him as a person. Jesus, on the other hand, sees a
man that he loves. Verse 3.
And Jesus said to the man with the withered hand, come here,
come here. Word for here really is this
like middle, middle of the synagogue.
There's a a way in which everyone can see what's about to
happen. This man is drawn from wherever
he's sitting into the middle, into the center, not only of the
synagogue, but of Jesus's presence and his Kingdom, not to
perform something for everyone, but to simply receive God's
healing and God's love. Now Jesus turns to his critics
and he he uses their words against them when he says this
in verse 3. Is it lawful on the Sabbath to
do good or to do harm, to save life or to kill?
What a brilliant question. What's lawful guys on the
Sabbath? You know, questions have a way
of framing reality. And it's like, at the end of the
day, what do you want to be doing or not doing on the
Sabbath to do good or harm, to save life or to kill life?
And it just cuts to the heart because he's making them choose.
You know, look at this man. He clearly has something that is
causing him suffering. Do you want to do him passive
harm by denying him the healing that would absolutely change his
life? Is that really how you're going
to to get to me? Is that really what you're going
to do? Are you going to stand in his
way? Or are you going to stand with
him and say, yes, we are for his healing.
And that's what the Sabbath is for.
Choose this day, good or evil, healing or killing, but really
at the end of the day, come out of hiding, come out of your
silent, judgment filled hypocrisy and stand either with
Jesus in his Kingdom or against it.
And I wonder if in that moment when Jesus poses that question,
if he was like hoping for a change of heart, hoping that
they would like be cut to the heart and that they would come
to the center too, and that they would stand with this man and
they would stop trying to use him to get to Jesus, whatever
the case may be, there was no change of heart.
Because verse 5 shows us that Jesus can see he's not getting
anywhere with these, with these, with these people.
And he looked around at them with anger, grieved at their
hardness of heart. If we could just stop for a
moment to appreciate that Jesus cared enough to be angry and to
grieve in response to their hardness of heart, you know,
they didn't care about the man. They only cared about their
games, their status. And Jesus's heart was like
strong enough, connected enough, compassionate enough to get
angry and to and to like let himself feel that and to really
actually want their hearts to change.
I think Jesus cared just as much about the Pharisees as he did as
he did about this man. The difference was that this man
was ready to receive what Jesus had to offer and they were not
in. Jesus heart was also large
enough and tender enough to heal this man.
At the end of verse 5, Jesus said to the man, stretch out
your hand, stretch out. Here's that act of agency.
Jesus is calling this man too, and he stretched it out and his
hand was restored. Such love, such tenderness for a
man who had nothing to give to Jesus in return.
It's simple, it's restful, it's good, it has all of the marks of
Jesus is Lord. Wherever Jesus is Lord, there's
something simple and restful and good and life giving.
But for his enemies, they wanted to keep it complicated.
They want to stay in their games.
And so mark ends with a very chilling aside.
Verse 6, the Pharisees went out and and immediately held counsel
with the Herodians against him, how to destroy him.
The irony is that the Pharisees were also working on the
Sabbath, just secretly. And this is what all performance
cultures produce. They produce sort of chilling
hypocrisy where on the outside you're doing everything you can
to put up a face, put up a front, appear like you're
keeping like all of the rules and you're really good.
But then secretly there's this other side, there's this split
personality, as it were, where secretly there's all kinds of
terrible things coming out and there's a private life that no
one would recognize. And The thing is like, again,
who among us has not done this? Who among us does not put on a
face and been fake and two faced?
Who among us has not been truly a little complicated?
The gospel of Jesus, friends came for complicated 2 faced
people to help to free us from that to to change us from the
inside out. It's simple and the gospel can,
I would say, untangle all these knots that we get ourselves in
because one day after this, Jesus would their their first of
all, their plot would work eventually and Jesus would
stretch out his hands not to be healed, but to be pierced for
all the for everyone who lives a complicated life.
His cross was honest. It was simple, it was public.
It was a public declaration. God loves you.
God came to forgive you. Your sin is real.
It has really hurt people. I came to forgive it.
I came to heal it. And here is grace.
But if you want to receive it, you got to come to the middle.
If you got to come to the cross, you got to come out from the
shadows into the light. Would we but come to the cross?
Would we but come to the center where Jesus calls us like he
called the man with the withered hand?
Come here. Come here out of silly games
into a simple gospel. Come here out of judgement and
into forgiveness. Come here out of performance.
I'll give you peace. Come here.
My yoke is easy. Come here.
My burden is light. Come here, sister.
Come here, brother. Stretch out your hands to be
cleansed. Stretch out the part of you that
needs to be healed that you don't want to show anyone.
Open your heart to be loved. Give me the knots and let me
untangle them. Open your eyes to see those on
the outside who are silently asking the people around us who
are silently asking themselves, do I belong here?
Where do I rank here? Am I better or worse than the
people around me? Am I safe?
Does God approve of me? Bring them to the center.
Bring them to me, Jesus says, and I will give to them what I
have given to you. It's the simple gospel.
Jesus is Lord Hallelujah, in the name of the Father, Son and Holy
Spirit, Amen.