Is It Lawful to Heal on the Sabbath?

In Nomine Iesu!

In the Name of the Father and of the + Son and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.

Sermon Text: St. Luke 14:1-11

“And + Jesus answering spake unto the lawyers and Pharisees, saying, ‘Is it lawful to heal on the sabbath, or not?’ But they held their peace. And He took him, and healed him, and let him go.”

Prayer in Pulpit before Sermon:

Lord God, heavenly Father, we pray Thee so to govern and guide us by Thy Holy Spirit that we may with all our heart hear and receive Thy Word, and truly sanctify the Lord’s Day, to the end that we may, in turn, be sanctified by Thy Word, that we may rest all our confidence and hope on + Jesus Christ, Thy Son, amend our lives in accordance with Thy Word, and avoid every offense, until we shall, by Thy grace in Christ, be saved forever through the same, Thy Son, our Lord, Who liveth and reigneth with Thee and the Holy Ghost, ever One God, world without end. Amen.

Grace, mercy, and peace be to you from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior + Jesus Christ. Amen. 

My dear friends in Christ, the Pharisees and scribes get one thing right: that the Law of God must be followed exactly. Indeed, the Law of the Lord God must be kept perfectly in order to be saved. The problem the scribes and Pharisees have, howbeit, is that their idea of perfection is flawed. Their concept of what makes up a perfect keeping of the whole will and Law of the Lord God is according to their own standards, and not the Lord God’s. The Lord God requires a perfection in keeping the Law which far exceeds the perfection of the Pharisees and Sadducees, as we heard several Sundays ago.

With their imperfect conception of what the perfect keeping of the Law of the Lord God is, they invite the Lord + Jesus, the Christ, to eat bread with them. The Lord is invited by a “ruler of the Pharisees.” On the surface this would appear to be a grand gesture. It would seem outwardly that they had respect and admiration for the Lord + Jesus. But, St. Luke the Evangelist records that “they were watching Him.” The Greek word reveals more than the English does. The word used here in the Greek was used by the Greeks to show that the watching was done with an evil intent. Their evil intent was further revealed when a man with dropsy suddenly appears.

Dropsy is known today as edema. It is an unnatural excess pooling of water in the body’s cavities. The person with dropsy is literally drowning in their flesh. That is sad enough in itself, that this man suffers such a condition. But, the Pharisees use this poor man as a plant to test the Lord + Jesus. They want to see whether or not He will heal on the Sabbath. This goes back to their understanding of the Law of the Lord God. It goes back to their need for a perfect keeping of the Law. The Lord does require a perfect keeping of the Sabbath, as we learn in the Third Commandment, “Thou shalt sanctify the holy day.” What does this mean? “We should fear and love God, that we may not despise preaching and His Word; but hold it sacred, and gladly hear and learn it.” We understand the keeping of the Sabbath day to mean that we will hold the Lord God’s Word sacred. We will attend the Divine Service, and other Services during the week whenever the Lord’s Word is being preached and offered. We will also daily attend to study of the Word of the Lord God. But especially on the day set apart for the hearing of the Word of the Lord God, we will come to the Lord’s house and hear His Word gladly and willingly.

But this is not how the Pharisees viewed the keeping of the holy day. They viewed it as a day when no work was to be done. The Pharisees even had rules about how far one was able to walk on a Sabbath, and other such regulations pertaining to the Sabbath that reflected their understanding of what a perfect keeping of the Third Commandment entailed. One of these was doing no work whatsoever. The Lord + Jesus was viewed as a healer, and therefore, to heal on the Sabbath day would be doing work. Hence, they set a man with dropsy in front of the Lord + Jesus, a man with a very serious condition, to see whether or not the Lord would heal on the Sabbath day, that is, whether He would do work or not. That is all they viewed this healing as, as work.

It shows their lack of compassion. Next Sunday we will see the Pharisees testing our Lord again. They will ask Him what the greatest Commandment is. Their intent will be to get Him to choose one, so that they can argue for another one. But our Lord + Jesus will reveal that the whole intent of the Law is about love. It is to love the Lord God with all our heart, soul, and mind, and to love our neighbor as ourselves. But this act of placing a man with dropsy before the Lord shows no love. There is no love for this man with dropsy, who is not there to be healed, but to see whether our Lord will break the Commandment (according to their own estimation of breaking the Commandment). There is no love for the Lord + Jesus, who was not invited to eat bread as a gesture of good will, but He was simply invited that they might watch Him in order to have something with which to accuse Him.

Furthermore, they have no love for each other, for the parable that follows these events, when our Lord marked how they all jostled to get the best seats, reveals that they only have love for themselves. They care about no one else but themselves. This shows how imperfectly they do keep the Law, because the Law and will of the Lord God is not about doing things for oneself. We do not keep the Law to puff ourselves up with our own righteousness. We do not keep the Law of the Lord God in order to have a laundry list of good works that we can present before the Lord God on the Last Day and say what a good person we have been. For our keeping of the Law of the Lord God is imperfect even at our best. Our Lord God requires a keeping of His Law that far exceeds the righteousness of the Pharisees and Sadducees, as we had heard several Sundays ago. 

The Pharisees are doubly wrong in their assessment of the Law of the Lord God. For the Law does not deal with the keeping of the outward tenets of the Law, as they imagined, but it deals with the heart. Our hearts must be inclined to our Lord God with all love for Him, and for our neighbor. They are concerned about our Lord + Jesus “doing work” on the Sabbath, by healing this poor man with dropsy. It reveals that their heart lacks the one thing that the Law requires, love and compassion. They have no love for the Lord + Jesus, and therefore, no love for the Lord God. And they have no love for the man with dropsy, and so they have no love for their neighbor.

But our Lord points out their hypocrisy by asking them a question, “Is it lawful to heal on the Sabbath?” Does doing works of compassion count as work on the Sabbath? The answer is no, because acts of compassion fulfill the very nature of the Law of the Lord God. This is why the Lord tells them a parable. “Which of you having an ass or ox fallen into a well, and you will not rescue it, even though it be on a Sabbath?” The Pharisees would have compassion upon a lowly ass, or ox, even if it was the Sabbath. They would never think to wait until the Sabbath was over in order to rescue it. How much more our fellow man? They are worth more than any animal. For they are created in the same way that we are created. They have been given not only a body, but also a soul. They have received, like us, the very breath of the Lord God breathed into them.

But the next parable reveals that they care about none of these things. They have no care for the Lord, no care for the man with dropsy, they only care about themselves. This hearkens back to their understanding of the Law of the Lord God. They view the perfect keeping of the Law of the Lord God as a means by which they can grade themselves against other men. When we judge our keeping of the Law of the Lord God against other people, we always come out on top. This is the very nature of fallen mankind, to view oneself as the best person there is, while placing everyone else below us.

The Pharisees are no different. They all view themselves as perfect keepers of the Law of the Lord God, and therefore, they all view themselves as worthy of the chief seats. This is what self-righteousness does to a person. He disregards everyone else but himself. He makes himself his own god. Everyone else must live up to his standards, and if they do not, then they are not worthy of him. Therefore, the Lord + Jesus was not worthy of the respect of the Pharisees, nor was the man with dropsy, nor even their fellow Pharisees.

This is why our Lord ends this pericope with the words that place everything into His hands. “He who humbleth himself will be exalted, and he who exalteth himself will be humbled.” This is a description of our Lord + Jesus. He has humbled Himself by coming down from heaven and taking upon Himself our flesh, but without sin, in order that He might further humble Himself by offering up His innocent life as ransom for ours on the tree of the holy cross. He was exalted upon the cross, so that He might exalt us from the bondage in which we are held; the bondage to sin and death. 

He shows us true compassion. He shows us the true keeping of the Law of the Lord God, by loving us to the end. He loves us all the way to the cross and death, so that we might have life and salvation. He healed this man with dropsy on the Sabbath. But after His crucifixion and death, He rested on the Sabbath in the grave, so that on the first day of the week, He might burst open the gates of death, and win for all those who believe on Him forgiveness, life, and salvation. 

Therefore, my dear friends, let us not be like the Pharisees who thought they kept the Law by placing their own concept of perfection upon it. But rather, let us humble ourselves with the knowledge that according to our sinfulness, we will never perfectly fulfill the Law of the Lord God. Let us instead, cling in faith to the One Who has perfectly kept the Law of God on our behalf, and Who has suffered our punishment upon the tree of the holy cross. He has had compassion upon us by placing Himself in our condition, so that He might heal us of the bondage of sin and death. Through Him we now have the forgiveness of our sins, when we cling to His sacrifice in faith. We also have through this same faith, the gift of eternal life and salvation. For He has fulfilled perfectly the Law which we could not, and has granted us the gift life eternal with Him. In the Name of our Lord + Jesus, the Christ. Amen.

Prayer in Pulpit after Sermon:

Almighty God, be pleased to accompany Thy Word with Thy Holy Spirit and grant that Thy Word would increase faith in us; bring into the Way of Truth all such as have erred; turn the hearts of the unrepentant; and for sake of Thy Name grant succor to all heavy hearts and those who are heavy-laden, that they may through the mercy of the Lord + Jesus Christ be relieved and preserved so that they succumb not to the temptation of despair but rather that they gain the victory over the world, the flesh, and the devil; through the same + Jesus Christ, Thy Son, our Lord, Who liveth and reigneth with the Thee and the Holy Ghost, ever One God, world without end. Amen.

The Votum:

The peace of God, which passeth all understanding, keep your hearts and minds through Christ + Jesus. Amen.

Soli Deo Gloria!