Love Fulfills the Sabbath

Trinity 17| Luke 14:1-11| Pastor James Preus| Trinity Lutheran Church| October 12, 2025

Jesus was set up. One of the rulers of the Pharisees invited Jesus over to eat, not to show a kind gesture toward a rival theologian, but so that he and his Pharisee friends could watch Jesus closely and catch Him doing something wrong, so that they could accuse Him. He invited Jesus on the Sabbath, because the Pharisees and lawyers did not approve of Jesus’ treatment of the Sabbath. It is likely that they either knew the man with dropsy would be there, or they even invited him, to test Jesus to see if He would break the Sabbath by healing him.

But Jesus does not fall for their bate. Instead, He asks them a question: “Is it lawful to heal on the Sabbath or not?” The Pharisees and lawyers remain silent. They didn’t want to be put to the test. They wanted to put Jesus to the test. When they didn’t answer, Jesus took the man with dropsy, healed him, and sent him on his way. And so, Jesus teaches the proper sense of the Third Commandment.

The Third Commandment, according to Exodus 20 is: “Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy. Six days you shall labor, and do all your work, but the seventh day is a Sabbath to the Lord your God. On it you shall not do any work, you, or your son, or your daughter, your male servant, or your female servant, or your livestock, or the sojourner who is within your gates. For in six days the Lord made the heavens and the earth, the sea, and all that is in them, and rested on the seventh day. Therefore, the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy.”

The Pharisees interpreted this commandment to mean that you could not do any work whatsoever on the Sabbath Day. But their interpretation is wrong. By healing the man, Jesus teaches us what is the true interpreter of the law. The true interpreter of the law is Love. St. Paul explains in Romans chapter 13, “Owe no one anything, except to love each other, for the one who loves another has fulfilled the law. For the commandments, ‘You shall not commit adultery, You shall not murder, You shall not steal, You shall not covet,’ and any other commandment, are summed up in this word: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ Love does no wrong to a neighbor; therefore, love is the fulfilling of the law.”

The man was suffering with dropsy. This is an ailment where the body retains water, so that a person is bloated. It not only looks bad, but it is painful and can lead to death. What does love demand in such a situation? Jesus can heal him of his affliction. What should Jesus do? Obviously, He should help him! And so, Jesus teaches us that you cannot keep any of the commandments without love. And the goal of every commandment is for you to love. The Ten Commandments are summarized in two tables: Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, and mind. And love your neighbor as yourself. This is the aim of each commandment. So, if you do not interpret the Ten Commandments through love for God and your neighbor, then you are interpreting the commandment wrongly.

More importantly, if you do not love as you follow the commandments, then you are breaking the commandments. Take for example the elder brother of the prodigal son. He served his father for many years without disobeying his commands, yet he resented his father the whole time. And so, he broke the Fourth Commandment: Honor your father and your mother. Likewise, when love demands it, the letter of the law may be broken in order to keep the spirit of the law. Jesus shows this in Matthew 12 when the Pharisees condemned Jesus’ disciples for plucking heads of grain and eating them on the Sabbath. Jesus reminds them of David, who, Scripture records, ate the bread of the Presence when he was hungry, which was only lawful for the priests to eat. Likewise, Jesus points out that the Pharisees themselves would pull their son or ox out of a pit on the Sabbath. Even Moses, the so-called Law-giver, did not circumcise the sons of Israel for forty years, even though it was a command of God given to Abraham, because their wandering in the wilderness made circumcision too dangerous for their baby boys.

And so, love both interprets and rules the law. If you do not know what love is, you do not understand the law. And if you do not love, then you will never keep the law, even if you follow it to the letter.

And so, God gave us the Third Commandment out of love for us. God gave us the Third Commandment so that we could have rest for both our bodies and for our souls. It was a law in Israel that every man, woman, child, and even animal must rest on the Sabbath day. Employers were not permitted to make their employees work. Not even masters could make their slaves work. Everyone had the right from God to rest his body. This is because God knows that everyone needs rest for his body. But this commandment was not solely or even primarily for the care of the body, but for the care of the soul. Since ordinary work days did not allow for much time to worship God and teach and learn His Word, Israelites used the Sabbath day to worship God and to instruct both young and old in God’s Word. This is why people would go to the Synagogues on the Sabbath. The Synagogues prefigured the Christian Congregations. As you can see, this commandment is centered on love. So, the Pharisees were wrong to interpret it legalistically, as if one could fulfill it simply by not working.

The Old Testament strictly forbid work on the Sabbath, which is Saturday, the seventh day of the week. God even commanded Moses to put to death those who went out to work on the Sabbath, so strictly did He insist on its observance. Yet, observing the Sabbath belongs to the ceremonial law, which is fulfilled in Christ. St. Paul writes in Colossians 2, “Therefore let no one pass judgment on you in questions of food and drink, or with regard to a festival or a new moon or a Sabbath. These are a shadow of the things to come, but the substance belongs to Christ.” The Sabbath is a shadow. Christ Jesus is the substance. When you see a shadow in the doorway, you look at it until the person who casts the shadow comes into view. Then you stop looking at the shadow, and fix your eyes on the person. Jesus has come. The command forbidding work on the seventh day has passed away.

We Christians are not forbidden to work on Saturday even as we are not forbidden to eat pork. Sabbath means rest. Jesus is our rest. Jesus says in Matthew 11, “Come to Me all you who labor and are heavy laden and I will give you rest. Take My yoke and learn from Me. For My yoke is easy and My burden is light. And you will find rest for your souls.” The Catholic Church did not change the Sabbath day from Saturday to Sunday. Rather, we Christians are free to make every day holy. Christians worship on Sundays, because Jesus Christ rose from the dead on Sunday. While we are free to worship on any day, the Apostles established the tradition to worship on Sunday and named it the Lord’s Day.

This does not mean that we are free to skip church, because Sunday worship is a tradition. God still commands us to hear and learn His Word and to worship Him. Scripture forbids us from neglecting to meet together (Hebrews 10:25), and the saints in Scripture set the example of devoting themselves to the Apostles’ teaching, to the breaking of bread, fellowship, and prayers (Acts 2:42). This is why Martin Luther explains the meaning of the Third Commandment: Remember the Sabbath Day by keeping it holy, like this, “We should fear and love God so that we do not despise preaching and His Word, but hold it sacred and gladly hear and learn it.” And so, God commands us to come and hear His Word. And to refuse to come and hear His Word is to disobey God.

Yet, it is not mere disobedience, like a child sneaking out of the kitchen with a cookie in his pocket. God gave us the Third Commandment, because He loves us. He loves our bodies and wants to give us rest, even today. And He loves our souls, and so He has commanded that His Word be preached to us and for Christ’s Sacraments to be administered to us, so that we may receive His forgiveness and be spiritually refreshed. Those who love God come to hear His Word, as Jesus says, “If you love Me, you will keep My commandments” (John 14:15) and “Whoever is of God hears the words of God. The reason why you do not hear them is that you are not of God.” (John 8:47) And so, here are some sobering words that every Christian should hear. The reason people choose not to come to church to hear God’s Word is because they do not love God. They choose other things, because they love those things more than God.

Love is the interpreter of the law. And so, love must be our motivator to keep the law. The Third Commandment commands us to love. Now, Jesus teaches us that necessity may keep us from observing it at the ordinary time, such as when a parent stays home with a sick child or a pastor goes and visits someone who is shut-in. However, the commandment is fulfilled when we love God. And love draws us to come and worship God, to hear His Word, and to encourage our fellow Christians in this.

When Jesus saw how the guests chose the best seats for themselves, He told them a parable based on Proverbs 25 that when you are invited to a wedding, do not take the first seat, but the last, lest you be put to shame by your host when he asks you to give up your seat for someone more important than you. But if you take the lowest seat, then he who invites you will invite you to move up higher, and you will be honored before everyone. He concludes, “Everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, but the one who humbles himself will be exalted.”

And this teaches us how to worship. Christ Jesus invites you to come to church and worship Him. At church we celebrate the wedding feast of Jesus and His bride, the Church. And Jesus has prepared for you a magnificent meal, which grants eternal life to all who eat it in faith. This meal was prepared by Christ Himself, when He offered Himself as the Lamb of God to take away all sins on the cross. Like a roast cooked to perfection, so Jesus perfected forever God’s law and satisfied His wrath against all sin. We come to church to receive this precious meal through His Word and Sacraments. We feast on this meal through faith. In the Sacrament of the Altar, we get an especially vivid sense of this feast, as Christ miraculously gives us His body and blood to eat and to drink under the forms of bread and wine. You certainly have been invited to a magnificent wedding banquet.

But how do you take the lowest seat? It is not by cramming in the back and leaving the first three pews empty. Rather, you take the lowest seat with your heart when you confess to God that you are a poor miserable sinner, who deserves God’s temporal and eternal punishment. We confess that we have failed to love God and our neighbor, and so we have failed to keep God’s law. We come to church confessing that we do not deserve the invitation, but we accept it through faith in God’s grace through Jesus Christ, who alone has perfected love and fulfilled God’s law. And everyone who humbles himself in this way is exalted by God. We sit in the lowest seat by confessing our sins, and Christ lifts us up by forgiving us. In Christ, we find not only rest for our bodies and souls, but love from God which produces love in us. This is our love-feast, where we claim nothing of ourselves, yet God gives us everything through Christ. So, may we celebrate this feast by loving God and one another through faith in Jesus Christ. Amen.