September 20, 2026
"Doing Good on the Sabbath" (Matthew 12:9-14)
Series: Heidelberg Catechism Scripture: Matthew 12:9–14
Hear now the word of the Lord From Matthew, chapter 12, verses 9 through 14. He, Jesus went on from there and entered their synagogue, and a man was there with a withered hand. And they asked him, is it lawful to heal on the Sabbath so that they might accuse him? He said to them, which one of you who has a sheep, if it falls into a pit on the Sabbath, will not take hold of it and lift it out of how much more value is a man than a sheep? So it is lawful to do good on the Sabbath.
Then he said to the man, stretch out your hand. And the man stretched it out, and it was restored healthy like the other. But the Pharisees went out and conspired against him. How to destroy him. This is the word of the Lord.
Please be seated. As you're taking your seats, let's join our hearts together tonight in prayer. Gracious Heavenly Father, I thank youk for your word. I thank youk for this day when we can give our attention to to your Word. I thank you for your Spirit, who was poured out for us a Sabbath day many years ago, on the day of Pentecost, on the day when we received the fullness of the gift of your spirit, applying to us all, that your Son, Jesus Christ, accomplished, fulfilled on the day of his resurrection from the dead, the first of the Sabbath of the new creation.
And so, Father, tonight, as we worship you, we pray that you would continue to fill us with your spirit, to give us hearts to understand and eyes to see and ears to hear all that is contained in the good news of the gospel of your son, Jesus Christ, our Savior, who is the Lord of the Sabbath. It's in Christ's name we pray. Amen.
In former life, I did something I was engaged in, something that I think has been helpful for me as I've grown in my understanding of the Sabbath. In a former life. I don't mean that I died and then had a different life. I mean, just in a long, long time ago when my life was very different than it is now. I served for several years as a professional parliamentarian.
So that is, I dealt with parliamentary procedure. You know, like, I move that we do this. I second the motion. Those in favor say Aye. Those opposed say no.
It was fascinating stuff. I'm sure you would all find it riveting. If you've ever read Robert's Rules of Order or seen it, it's about a 700 page of book of rules about how to do all of this stuff. And there was a time when I knew every single rule in that book, I studied hard, took a lot of tests to get accredited in different ways, and helped advise organizations on how to use this. Now, to some people, when I tell us this, and I'm sure this won't be you, but when I tell people this, they sort of are taken aback.
Oh, you were a professional legalist. But to me, that's not what this was about. To me, when I was thinking about all of those rules, and this is fun I had in learning them and especially applying them, is it wasn't the rules. It wasn't a whole lot of nitpicky, ticky tack rules that I was obsessed with. It was the purpose behind them.
Because I love to see organizations come together and have an opportunity to have full and free and fair debate where the rights of the individuals and those with a minority opinion were respected and they had their chance to make their case. And I sometimes saw organizations swayed because one brave person stood up and debated in a different direction. I loved that. I thought that was really exciting and fun and dramatic. And so when I was in those organizations, working with them, I was really trying to sort of work against two kinds of people who had different ways of relating to these rules.
One group of people were people who knew the rules, at least to some degree. They knew the rules, but they did not really understand or appreciate those principles behind the rules. A full and free debate of protecting the rights of individual members and those of minority opinions and the majority and absentees and the whole assembly together. And so they would often use their knowledge of the rules to try to sort of force through their opinions and to try to get their ideas adopted because they knew the rules better than most. But then there were other people, on the other hand, who just were disenchanted.
They did not want anything to do with those rules. That's just a lot of legalism. We don't need those rules. Let's just try to pursue those purposes, those goals of having a good organization and trying to just respect one another. And let's not worry about all of those rules, which sounded fine until difficult cases arose.
And by just wanting to do away with the rules and try to use what they thought was common sense, they didn't realize the way in which they were in fact violating some of the purposes that they said they wanted to achieve. Now again, that was sort of an experience I had early in life that I thought a lot about as I thought about the Sabbath. The. Because again, the Sabbath was not something that I spent a whole lot of time thinking too deeply. About in my younger years again, we went to church in the morning, but the rest of the day really didn't matter too much.
And in fact, if you would have pressed me. And in fact, one day someone did press me. I was working on Hebrew homework in seminary. Actually, it was the same man who texted me this morning, I mentioned who was praying for me today. His name is Parker Johnson.
He is a great guy. If you move to Alabama, I've got a church for you. But Parker said to me one day when I was studying on the Lord's Day, he said, you know, you really shouldn't be studying today. You need to do that six other days. And he said, I don't want to bind your conscience.
And I very snappily and snarkily and sinfully said, good, then don't bind my conscience. I was a great sinner, I still am. But I eventually came to understand the goodness of this thing and to understand that rules and certain things that we set aside prohibitions of things to do were not for the sake of rules themselves. They were for a greater purpose, for the greatest purpose of what we had in the officers reading of delighting in the Lord, a special experience when we called the Sabbath a delight. There's something we can only get in and on this day that we need to know about and we need to favor as Christians.
And so tonight, as we come to Jesus teaching us about the Sabbath, I want us to think, how do we balance the purpose of the Sabbath with the prohibitions of the Sabbath? And how do we prioritize the substance of the Sabbath? Delight in the Lord above the ceremony. So our theme tonight, following Jesus is that is to do good on the Sabbath. Do good on the Sabbath.
And so we'll look at this in three parts. First of all, doing what is lawful, doing what is lawful on the Sabbath. Second, doing what is good, doing what is good on the Sabbath. And third, doing what is evil on the Sabbath. So let's start in verses 9 through 10, doing what is lawful.
1. Doing What Is Lawful (Matthew 12:9-10)
Now, before we look at our passage, I want to just peek back to the end of the previous chapter. In chapter 11, verses 28, 29 and 30, Jesus says some of his most meaningful comforting words. Here he says, come to me all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon me and learn from me. For I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls.
For my yoke is easy and my burden is light. Now, when we are reading the Gospels, it's important to understand that it wasn't. Don't think of the Gospels as sort of like there were sort of these little stories about Jesus that were written on scraps of paper and they were just put into a big hat. And as the Gospel writers were writing the Gospel stories, they would just grab one out of a hat and put it down, and they would grab another one out of a hat and they would put it down and grab another one out of the hat. The order that we are given in the Gospels is often, but not always chronological.
More often the order that we are given is thematic. What we read in one place is later clarified and given further definition in the next passage. And so what happens in the next passage? How do we find this rest that is in the Son of Man? Well, Jesus declares, I am the Lord of the Sabbath, verse 8.
For the Son of Man is the Lord of the Sabbath. Again, following this thematic theme of the Son of Man giving rest to those who need it as the Lord of the Sabbath. Now we have a test case in verses 9 through 14, just building, building, building on this idea of the rest that the Son of Man is going to give to us through the Sabbath. And we read that Jesus went on and entered the synagogue and a man was there with a withered hand. Now that the withering of the hand is important, we're going to come back to that.
And they asked him, is it lawful to heal on the Sabbath? Now this is the traditional Jewish approach to questions about the Sabbath, to ask what is lawful and what is not lawful to do on the Sabbath. And if you look at the rabbis and you read some of their tractates in the Mishnah and all of these different places, you will read detailed legislation about how far you could walk, how much you could carry. You could read especially information and debates on how much you could do to heal someone on the Sabbath. And there was some debate about this.
But in general, all Jewish rabbis acknowledged that if there was a need to act up on a life threatening condition, if someone starts bleeding out or something like that, it is appropriate, it is lawful to actually go and bind up that wound. And even they were generous, even if you didn't know whether it might be life threatening, it was lawful for you to do good, to try to take care of that issue at the time. But if there was no pressing emergency, the rabbis would say, it is not lawful to heal on the Sabbath. And here we have a man who, it doesn't seem to be a recent condition. It sounds like he's had this withered hand for a long time.
It certainly isn't life threatening. You can do without a hand. And therefore, in their opinion, it would not have been lawful if the only question is whether something had to happen. At this moment, the answer was clearly no. But Matthew goes on to tell us why they are asking this, so that they might accuse him.
These were not people having an engaging conversation. They were not intellectually curious about this. They were collecting ammunition to bring a case against Jesus.
So here we have a group of people, these Pharisees, who are deep in their nit picky, ticky tack rules. But without understanding the purpose behind the Sabbath, they had established this entire architecture, this entire structure of what may or may not happen on the Sabbath that was built upon a faulty foundation, a faulty premise of what exactly the Lord was after on the Sabbath. And Jesus has come. I read in one book, it's this, Imagine this beautiful garden. It was established and it was for the enjoyment of God's people with fellowship with him.
And to protect this garden, some people came along and they put up a lot of barriers to keep people out. And it's as though Jesus walks up, looks at the barriers and tears them down so that God's people can once again get into the garden, get into the enjoyment of fellowship with God on the Sabbath day. And these rules being the barrier. What the Pharisees do not understand is that every rule has an exception. Maybe you learned in school, I before E except after C, that's the exception.
If you were spelling the word pierce, P, I, E, R, C, E, I comes before E. But if you spell perceive very close but similar, well, E and I come after C. And so it's E I instead of I before E. That's the exception to the rule. You cannot really understand any of the rules without understanding the exceptions to the rules, because the purpose is revealed and it's going to help to tell you which direction to take in each case of application. And so if you misunderstand the purpose of the rules, if you see the Sabbath as something about outward, formal, external conformity, you will misunderstand the applications and the exceptions of what exactly the Sabbath is about. And again, the Pharisees are laser focused on restrictions and prohibitions. So for them mercy is not lawful.
The only question is whether something is lawful. But here comes the Son of Man, the Lord of the Sabbath, to reframe their understanding of how we know what to do and when on the Sabbath, Jesus is going to take the question from is it lawful? To is it good? In verses 11 through 13. So here comes the second section, doing what is good on the Sabbath.
2. Doing What Is Good (Matthew 12:11-13)
In verse 11, Jesus said to them, which one of you, if he has a sheep? Or literally, this is not just a sheep, it's one sheep. Jesus is making an argument from the lesser to the greater. And so he's not talking about someone who just only, only has one sheep, where the sheep is actually very valuable. He's talking about someone who has one sheep among the entire flock.
And this one sheep, like the one that wanders away from the 99, this one sheep wanders off and gets stuck in a pit. Now think about the pit. The pit's not life threatening. It might be uncomfortable, might be even a little frightening for the sheep, but it's not going to hurt that sheep. It'll be just fine.
It could stand there overnight. You can come back and get that sheep out of the pit the next morning. Hardly life threatening. But he says to them, who would leave that sheep in the pit? Even if it's just one of the many that you still have in the flock, even if it's not a life threatening situation, how many of you would not go into that pit to get that sheep out?
And again, he's making an argument from the lesser to the greater. If you would do this for a less value sheep, of how much more value is a man than a sheep. If you care about that sheep, you've got to care about the man. And so he says, so it is lawful to do good on the Sabbath. Jesus was not saying, you don't really need to worry anymore about this.
Rather he was saying, you have wrongly interpreted and applied this law that is still valid. Now, in the previous passage in verses 1 through 8, Jesus emphasized mercy. If you look back at 12, 7, and if you had known what this means, I desire mercy and not sacrifice, you would not have condemned the guiltless for what they had done on the Sabbath. But here Jesus expands it to the principle of doing good on the Sabbath. Lenski, a commentator, writes, for the Pharisees, the question was to do or not to do.
That's the question for Jesus, is it to do good or not to do good on the Sabbath? And so he's implicitly indicting the Pharisees for justifying the refraining from doing good, which is to say doing evil on the Sabbath. Now, our Lord is brilliant in so many ways. It is so fun to watch the way that he interacts with these nitpicky, ticky tack Pharisees, because look at what he does in verse 13 he speaks to the man. Then he said to the man, stretch out your hand.
And the man stretched it out, and it was restored, healthy like the other. Do you know what no rabbi ever condemned doing on the Sabbath? Speaking. Jesus did nothing forbidden by anyone on the Sabbath day. Here, even by the strangest application of the Sabbath laws that the rabbis might have had, Jesus did not violate that at all.
He gives them no room to condemn him. That doesn't stop them, as we'll get to in just moment. But here he makes the withered hand healthy. There's a picture of what Jesus is doing by making their withered, shriveled understanding of the Sabbath full and vital and free again. Now, I said earlier, we come back to this word withered, because it's really, really important.
This word withered shows up one other time in the Gospel of Matthew, and it's in relation to when Jesus has just come from cleansing the temple. So there they have a withered worship going on in the temple. And coming from that, he sees a tree that outwardly looks very beautiful, very leafy. It's a fig tree, and it should, if it has leaves, the fruit actually grows before the leaves. And so if there are leaves, there should be fruit.
And seeing this beautiful, externally beautiful, leafy tree, he goes over to take the fruit, but finds that it is fruitless. And so Jesus says, may you never bear fruit again. And instantly it withers. So here we have a withered man's hand becoming healthy, and Jesus is taking a shriveled view of the Sabbath and making it vital. There you have an outwardly externally impressive tree that Jesus withers.
Why? Again, these things are arranged often chronologically, but more often thematically. It's a picture of how God sees the worship of Israel at that time. It was externally beautiful, but it was impoverished, it was withered. Jesus is then shifting the question from what is lawful to do?
To that it is lawful to do good, from a legal ceremonial definition to a definition dealing with fruitful substance. But the final contrast we have is in verse 14, it deals with the Pharisees. In verse 14, we have the third part, doing what is evil. We read the Pharisees went out and conspired against him. How to destroy him.
3. Doing What Is Evil (Matthew 12:14)
Again, Linsky writes, to heal on the Sabbath, well, that's apparently a mortal crime. But to plot myrtle, well, apparently that is a perfectly lawful act. It's being sarcastic. It's evil to plan murder on any day, but especially on the Sabbath day. And we're seeing here a little bit of what happens when there is a legalistic view of anything.
You see, the Pharisees did not have too high of a view of the Sabbath. In fact, they had too low of a view. Now, like a lot of the people that I dealt with as a parliamentarian, they knew some of the rules, but they missing understood the deeper purpose of the rules. And therefore their understanding of the rules was really only about getting their own way, preserving their power. And so because of this, they did not understand what the rules forbid them from doing in their own lives.
And so they were perfectly confident and comfortable plotting murder on the Sabbath day. They were focused on one definition, so they totally missed the sin which was in their lives. So we don't want to be people who are overly obsessed with rules and prohibition, But I want to close this time by just thinking a little bit about the other side of this, rejecting and being concerned about legalism. So that by just trying to get away with those, get away with those rules and just try to do common sense in our approach to the Sabbath, we end up missing out on some of the blessing, some of the fruitfulness that God intends for the Sabbath. So our application as we sort of wrap this sermon up is to do good on the Sabbath.
God gave the Sabbath law as a part of his abiding moral law. It's preserved in the fourth commandment, Remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy. Now it's very important. Embedded in that commandment is a clue that one day the day of observing the Sabbath would change. Because the command is, remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy.
But then it goes on to say, the seventh day is not the Sabbath day. The seventh day is a Sabbath day to the Lord your God. So why was it on the seventh day? Well, originally it's because of that creation. But there was an abiding command from the very beginning to set apart one day in seven as holy to the Lord.
But the fourth commandment reveals that that day could and would eventually change at God's institution. Not just randomly on any given week, but something major had to happen if the first Sabbath was established on the seventh day at the first creation, on the new creation, on the resurrection of the dead of Jesus Christ, a new day would be set for the Sabbath on the first day of the week. And actually this is hard to see in English Bibles, but every time you read on the first day of the week, particularly relating to the day of Jesus resurrection, the literal phrase there is the first of the Sabbath, the first of the Sabbath, the first of the Sabbath, we see it over and over again relating to Sunday, the Lord's Day. It is called the first Sabbath or the first of the Sabbath, and we commemorate this to this day because this is the day that Jesus was risen from the dead. And this is also the day that the Holy Spirit was given at Pentecost.
So what do we do to keep the Christian Sabbath, the Lord's Day? Well, the principle Jesus articulates frames our discussions about the Sabbath in two important ways. First. First of all, it keeps us from a legalism that is primarily focused on rules and regulations and nitpicky tiki tack rules. Instead, it is not about don't do these.
It rather calls us to discern spiritually. Second of all, what is good. We are called to fill out this day with what is good and holy to the Lord. There is a gospel in the Sabbath because here we are reminded. He says in Exodus 31 above all, you shall keep my Sabbaths so that you may know that I, the Lord, am the one who sanctifies you.
The Sabbath reminds us that we don't make ourselves holy, especially not by carefully keeping of outward ceremonies. The Sabbath reminds us that it is always from first to last God who sanctifies us. We rest from our work, but we also rest from trying to earn anything from God. We come this day not to perform something so that God will love us. We come in the knowledge that God has already done everything necessary for our salvation in raising His Son Jesus Christ from the dead.
So through the weak, it is good to work and it is good to enjoy worldly recreations. But on this day which is holy to the Lord, it is good to rest from those things. And that is important to understand that rest is actually not the commandment. Sometimes you say, well, I'm just going to rest. Whatever is restful is fair game for the Sabbath.
Rest is never the end. The commandment is remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy. Rest is simply a means to an end. We rest from our worldly works and recreations so that we can remember and keep the Sabbath holy. Now here's what I want to say.
As much as I have grown in my love for and appreciation of the Sabbath, I am still such a sinner in this area because this is a day that by nature really gets to the heart. We are called to not even think about our normal work. We're not even supposed to think about worldly recreation. And I'll confess, sometimes I'm tempted to see what the Scar score the ball game was or to think about plotting that project that I'm working on. I've actually been challenged by my children.
Dad, it's the Lord's day. You shouldn't be looking up that today. You're right. You're right. So this is something I'm growing in.
This is something we are all called to grow in. But it's important to understand what God's standard is. And it's important to understand the good that we forfeit when we sin against these things. God wants you to be free from all of these distractions, except insofar as we're called the works of mercy or necessity. But he wants you to be free from as many distractions as possible to enjoy Him.
This is an embassy of heaven. Not just the square footage of the sanctuary, but this whole day is.
Let me give you an illustration as you think about. So what would this mean if I were trying to do what's good on the Sabbath? It means to worship. It means to do mercy. It means to do necessity.
But what does that mean? Get into the brass tacks. What was that actually going to mean in my day to day life? Well, let me give you an illustration. Imagine a married couple with some young children who are finally getting ready for a date.
And if you are maybe in that, or have been in that stage of life as I am, you probably understand that trying to go mom and dad trying to go out for a date is complex. It is something like planning for a full scale military operation. You have to get the babysitter, you have to get the reserve, you have to have the plan, you have to know exactly how long it's going to be. It's not simply just saunter off and do something fun. It's never that.
There's always something to plan to get ready for it. But imagine you've made all those plans. You've made all those preparations, you've made all those reservations. You've set the childcare up so you're finally together with your wife or with your husband. And during that time your spouse says, hold on, I just had a thought for work and pulls out the phone, or maybe brought a laptop with him, starts pulling out some stuff and start working on some things.
Is there anything wrong with working? No, work is good, but it's particularly inappropriate on that date. Or what about the wife? Maybe she says, oh, look at that shop over there. Why don't you stay here?
We're just waiting on our order anyway, why don't you stay here? I'm going to actually go over there. I needed to pick up a few things from the store over there. I wanted to try on some new clothes or shoes or whatever it is you used to hear. I'm going to go over and do that.
Is there anything wrong with shopping? No, but it's particularly inappropriate in that context. Imagine these people ignoring one another. Imagining these people on a date and spending their entire time on their phones instead of spending time with their spouse. Engaging, which is the whole purpose for making all the preparations.
They could get out and do that very thing.
Well, the bridegroom of the church, the Lord Jesus Christ, summons you into his presence for one day every week. It's the one day where you can make all of your preparations in advance so that you're not distracted, so that you can enjoy this day to the fullest. Now, sometimes there are times I've been out on my wife and someone had a medical emergency. He was walking out of something and just kind of collapsed and I had to rush out of the car to go try to help him. There are times when I will leave my wife to go do something else, but they're rare and they need to be major acts of mercy to do.
Doesn't mean there's never a time to get your sheep out of the pit. But the question to ask, is this important enough to interact? The great blessings, the delight in the Lord that he has given to us on this day. Let's pray. Heavenly Father, what a day of rest and gladness that you have given to us.
And we pray on this day that you would help us to enjoy what you have given us to the fullest. Especially. Especially when we gather together to worship. Father, I thank you for everyone here and here in the morning. I pray that these times would be special and blessed and set apart as holy to you.
We pray that we would all grow in this and this day would increasingly become a delight. We pray all this that we might know and love our Savior more and more. It's in Christ's name that we pray. Amen.
other sermons in this series
Oct 4
2026
"Love Your Neighbor" (Matthew 5:21-26)
Preacher: Rev. Jacob Gerber Scripture: Matthew 5:21–26 Series: Heidelberg Catechism
Sep 27
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"The Home Law" (Ephesians 6:1-4; Proverbs 22:6)
Preacher: Wybren Oord Scripture: Ephesians 6:1–4, Proverbs 22:6 Series: Heidelberg Catechism
Sep 6
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"Third Commandment: Be Careful, Little Tongue, What You Say" (James 5:12)
Preacher: Luis Muñoz Scripture: James 5:12 Series: Heidelberg Catechism