Matthew 12

The call to rest from our own labors in the finished work of Christ, at the close of the previous chapter, is the lead-in to Jesus’ controversy with the Pharisees about the Sabbath.

     12:1-8.  The issue was not taking and eating the grain, which was lawful (Dt.23:25), but threshing grain on the Sabbath.  The controversy goes to the heart of the meaning and purpose of the Law.  In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus taught that the rigid keeping of rules does not satisfy the spirit of the law (5:17 ff.), for it allows all kinds of bad thoughts and behavior.  Here, bad thoughts on the Pharisees’ part tried to stretch the letter of the law to violate its spirit.  One purpose of the Sabbath law is compassion.  Moses attaches two different reasons to the fourth commandment.  Both reasons are compassionate.  Ex.20:11 stresses the creation mandate.  The oppressed are called to remember God’s finished work of creation, and to join him in his rest, much as Jesus invites us to do in Mt.11:28.  In Dt.5:15, the reason Moses attaches to the commandment is that it is a remembrance of the grace and mercy of God in redemption, exemplified by the deliverance of a people for himself out of slavery in Egypt, where there was no rest.

     Any Christian who teaches that the fourth commandment is only a ceremonial law, and not a moral imperative, does not understand the compassion embedded in this law, and needs to read Mt.5:19.  Any one who keeps it in such a way that it adds to the bondage of others under them needs to remember the words of Jesus which Mark 2:27 adds after Mt.12:7.  “The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath.”  Jesus keeps the Sabbath.  He is the infallible interpreter of it.  It is the King’s law.  He is the King (v.8).

     12:9-14.  This passage further nails down the fact that the Sabbath, which was made for mercy’s sake, cannot be violated by a work of mercy.  V.14 shows the true perversion of the Pharisees before the righteousness of the real law of God.  They plot Jesus’ murder on the Sabbath.

     12:15-21.  But Jesus, the Lord of the Sabbath, offers both the compassion and justice of the real law not only to the lost sheep of Israel, but even to the Gentiles.

     12:23.  This reminds us of Paul Copeland’s famous question.  “When is a question not a question?”  His answer was, of course, when it demands an answer understood by all.  Such is the case here.  Pastor Copeland’s example, understood by all the men of his congregation, was this question asked him by his wife.  “You’re not going to wear that tie are you?”  At his going away party, the men of the congregation each gave him a tie they were not allowed to wear.

     12:26,28-29,  Jesus binds the strong man, Satan.  Cf. Luke 11:21, 22;  John 12:31; Heb.2:14; Rev.20:2.

     12:31-37.  The consequences of many sins last as long as life, but there is a sin that can never be forgiven, here or hereafter.  That sin is to speak against knowledge and without repentance against the Holy Spirit.  To call the gracious miracles of God’s power that release the afflicted from the bonds of Satan “bad fruit”, and the work of the prince of demons, is such a sin. 

     12:38 read in the context of vv.13-15, 22-28 is almost pathetically funny.  “We are angry enough at the works you are doing to kill you.  Show us one more.”

     12:39.  An interesting connection here with John 7:52, in that Jonah was from a place near Nazareth.

     12:40.  “Three days and three nights” is said to be a Jewish idiom that can mean any continuous portion of three consecutive days.  Credit Bruce Hemphill.