On a Sabbath,while he was going through the grainfields, his disciples plucked and ate some heads of grain, rubbing them in their hands. But some of the Pharisees said, “Why are you doing what is not lawful to do on the Sabbath?” And Jesus answered them, “Have you not read what David did when he was hungry, he and those who were with him: how he entered the house of God and took and ate the bread of the Presence, which is not lawful for any but the priests to eat, and also gave it to those with him?” And he said to them, “The Son of Man is lord of the Sabbath.” – Luke 6:1-5

This passage puzzled me for a long time. Questions arose every time I read it. Wasn’t David wrong for eating that bread? Is Jesus condoning David’s blantant violation of tabernacle law? Why would Jesus appeal to David eating the bread of the Presence when defending himself against accusations of Sabbath breaking?

I haven’t looked in any commentaries on this yet, my collection of the three volume Word commentary on Luke only includes the last two volumes so far. Besides, I like to work on it myself for a while before going to the commentaries. So here’s what I’ve wrestled with so far.

Jesus refers to the episode in 1Sa 21:1-6 where David has fled empty-handed from Saul and is now looking for food and weapons. He goes to the tabernacle which was at Nob and speaks to Ahimelech the priest, begging for food. Ahimelech says that they only food available is the show bread, the bread that is baked and placed on the tables in the holy place of the tabernacle. That bread is only supposed to be eaten by the priests when it is replaced weekly (Lev 24:5-9). He appears to indicate that it is only available to them if they’re clean; in this case if they’ve abstained from sex. Where did that come from?

In the end, David claims that they have and gets the bread as well as Goliath’s sword and he leaves. ¹There is no mentioned in this story that David was traveling with companions, it appears that he was traveling alone. But Jesus indicates that he had young men with him. There is nothing in 1Sa 20 and 21 to indicate that he was entirely alone. The author only speaks of David but he could have had men with him who do not get mentioned because the author doesn’t want to divert our attention from David at this point. That is to say, the author never explicitly says that David traveled alone. Jesus wasn’t wrong. But what just happened? Did David and Ahimelech do something wrong here? By a strict interpretation of the Law, yes they did. What should give us pause on that is that this is never pointed to as one of David’s sins. There is no divine condemnation on the act and therefore we should be careful not to judge it ourselves. Of course that doesn’t mean that every action that is wrong in the Bible must have divine judgment to tell us it is wrong, but when it applies to one of whom it is said “he is a man after my own hear” and then Jesus holds up the episode as an example, well I think it should slow us down in rushing to judgment.

Alright Tim, then what did happen? ²I’m tempted to steal from Luther At The Movies and yell “SILENCE, IMAGINARY INTERLOCUTOR!” but that’s Martin Luther’s gig so I’ll let him have it. We have to include Jesus’ understanding of the text to get to the meaning. And in this case, we need to specifically include Jesus’ teaching on the Law to get to the point. According to Jesus, the entire Law hangs on two commandments, love God and love man (Matt 22:40). Obedience to the Law ³Notice that I capitalized ‘Law’. I did that to show that it has a specific reference to the Mosaic Law and not God’s moral law that is written on humanity’s heart. It is never okay to commit adultery or to murder or to worship a false god. was never intended to be a ridged thing like the Pharisees tried to make it. In the next story in Luke (6:6-11), the Pharisees attack Jesus for healing on the Sabbath and he asks “is it lawful on the Sabbath to do good or to do harm, to save life or to destroy it?” The Law said that no work was to be done on the Sabbath but it did allow for certain things. Rituals were performed on the Sabbath so the priests worked. If your ox fell in a hole on the Sabbath you could pull it out. Theologians call these acts of necessity and acts of mercy that are permissible on the Sabbath. So it would be a mistake to take as absolute the statement that no work shall be done on the Sabbath and make it absolute. The example of the Law should lead us to that conclusion.

The way we make the decision on whether a thing is permitted or not when it appears to violate the Law requires wisdom and that is the case with the David story that Jesus points to.  To get to the heart of the issue, we need to first understand what it means to be holy. The bread that David and his men ate was holy. By ‘holy’ it meant that it was set aside for God’s purposes. It wasn’t to be treated like other things, God had a purpose in it. Similarly, God had a purpose in David, David was holy. Since these things were holy God gets to decide how they were used. Both David and the show bread were used according to God’s purposes. David was God’s man and would ascend to the throne of Israel. God could have provided food for David in any number of ways as he traveled to Nob but he didn’t. He didn’t provide for David till David arrived at the tabernacle and asked for whatever they had on hand. Even here God could have provided for David in a way that would involve the tabernacle. Ahimelech could have had a bountiful harvest. But God used the show bread to keep his king alive. God showed that he was Lord of the Tabernacle and Lord of the Kingdom in doing this.

So when we consider how Jesus pointed to this episode and then announced that he was Lord of the Sabbath, he is doing much more than an “in your face” with David’s supposed violation. He is telling the Pharisees that since the Sabbath is holy and these men are holy, He can decide how they are used for his purposes. He is the Lord of the Sabbath after all. The Sabbath and his disciples were holy unto him. Jesus told the Pharisees that he was God.

I’m hoping that this might become an occasional series on my thoughts about a biblical hermeneutic that is essentially Reformed in perspective and essentially baptistic. I know that sounds like I’m saying that I want to develop a method of reading the Bible that will result in believer’s-only baptism, but that isn’t what I’m intending. There are plenty of Baptists who are Reformed ¹By “Reformed” I mean more than just Calvinists. I’m thinking at least Calvinist but also adhering to a form of Covenant Theology in opposition to Dispensational or New Covenant Theology. and generally we read the Bible in similar ways. These Christians would most likely agree with the theology expressed in the 1689 London Baptist Confession of Faith. I’ll be using that confession as a guideline as I consider this subject.

So why develop a hermeneutic at all? Well, you have one even if you don’t know it and even if it isn’t consistently applied. A hermeneutic shouldn’t be a pair of shackles that bind you as you read the Scriptures, but neither should it be a pamphlet that introduces you to the city zoo but doesn’t really give you much detail. I think it should be somewhere in between those two and it should be an aid in making sense of the Biblical record.

“Why not just read the Bible and leave it at that?” Well, as I said, you have a hermeneutic whether you acknowledge it or not. When we read our Bibles we come to them with a set of presuppositions that affect how we understand the text. We need to be honest about that. If we think otherwise, we’re fooling ourselves. The question is not whether we have presuppositions or not, it is whether they are Biblical presuppositions. If we can acknowledge our presuppositions exist then we can try to allow the Bible to correct them where they need correction. I think this is possible to a certain resolution and then there will be honest differences after that. What I mean is that there will be some things that we’re just going to disagree on even if we use the same hermeneutic.

Let me give you an example of how some of this works. For a while after I became a Protestant, I adopted the dispensational teaching I’d heard on Christian radio. My presupposition was that there was a distinction between Israel and the Church in this age. The promises made to Israel were for ethnic Israel and were not transmitted to the Church. So as I was teaching through the book of Galatians, I got to chapter 3. I was doing okay till I got to verse 29, “And if you are Christ’s, then you are Abraham’s offspring, heirs according to promise.” Now I wanted the Abrahamic Covenant to be just for the Jews, Abraham’s offspring. When I read this verse I remember pushing back from the kitchen table and thinking, “How do I explain this?” I wanted to find a way to look Galatians 3:29 in the face and maintain the distinction. It took a second before my conscience kicked in and I decided that if the Bible says that we are heirs to Abraham’s covenant, then that was the way it was. ²This is not “replacement theology” where the Church replaces Israel. That would mean that the Jews were cut off and that clearly isn’t true. This is more “fulfillment theology” where the community of Israel is expanded and the promises that include the ingrafting of the Gentiles are part of the picture. I don’t know anyone who holds to replacement theology. I had to let my presupposition go or be at odds with what the Bible teaches. Once I released it, I saw in other passages that the same thing was true. It wasn’t taught only here. I hadn’t seen it in other places before because my presupposition caused me to read those verses a certain way.

An example of how a similar hermeneutic will only get us so much “resolution of agreement” is in the area of eschatology. Reformed Baptists are largely amillennial in their eschatology. Largely but not exclusively. I am premillennial of the historic kind. I’m not aware of any who are postmillennial but there are probably a few. Some of the issues that we face require more resolution than a hermeneutic that is generally agreed on can yield. This is really important to keep in mind because our eschatology can drive some of our presuppositions.

So back to the hermeneutic issue. I recognize that we’re going to have presuppositions and I want to include that reality in the development of the hermeneutic. To ignore them will insure failure. But I also want to make room for those presuppositions to be challenged and corrected by the testimony of the Bible.

Well, that’s the introduction to the topic. We’ll have to see if I go any farther with this, but I probably will. This is something that I’ve been thinking on for a while and it finally found its way to my finger tips.

There is a $27 million museum being build outside Cincinnati that promotes a creationist view of, well, creation. In this age of tolerance and peaceful coexistence, you’d figure the whole thing would be ignored except by those who already hold a literalist view of the first chapters of Genesis, right? Bah! One of the most intolerant groups of people in the world is scientists! Don’t you dare shake the status quo! And so a protest is planned because some “fear that their children may be influenced by what the museum teaches.” Egad! You mean they might think for themselves when presented with contradictory evidence! This cannot stand.

But the protesters include Christians as well. Go figure. I found this quote rather ironic:

“My brothers and sisters in the faith who embrace [the creationist] understanding call into question the whole Christian concept,” expressed the Rev. Mendle Adams, pastor of St. Peter’s United Church of Christ in Cincinnati, according to the Enquirer. “They make us a laughingstock.”

Is “the whole Christian concept” that we not be made a laughingstock Rev. Adams? Wasn’t this the kind of reaction the philosophers of Paul’s day had when he preached on Mars Hill? He confronted the worldview of the day and was not well received. It didn’t “call into question the whole Christian concept.” Look, Rev. if the creationists are wrong, they’re wrong based on faulty exegesis not based on what the world thinks of them.

The museum is being built by Answers in Genesis, a group who have on occasion jacked up my blood pressure with some of their exegesis. No, I’m not a fan. However, these people have as much right to build a museum that showcases their view of how we got here as does any other. If there was a group who build a museum to demonstrate that mankind arrived on this planet by means of an superior race who put us here as part of an eighth grader’s science experiment would there be protests? Perhaps there is some evidence for creation that cannot be put in a museum without “proper scientific interpretation?” Let them build the museum and let them compete in the marketplace of ideas.

Here it is. The perfect, and I mean absolutely perfect gift for the man who has everything.

Nothing.

This has already made its rounds in the blogs but I thought I’d point it out here too. There was recently a large church planting gathering in Florida. Mark Driscoll decided not to fly from one side the continent the other in order to deliver a 20 minute talk, so he sent a video. It was a good message and the Acts 29 folks brought a few cases worth of DVDs to hand out for free. After the video was played at the conference, the hosts decided not to hand it out. Bill Hybels had a problem with the complementarianism of it. Acts 29 got to haul back the cases of DVDs.

Russell Moore of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary recently had an article (PDF) published in the Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society on the complementarian/egalitarian debate. I kept that volume of JETS off the shelf so I could reread that piece. He says some interesting things but there is something in it that has me a bit worried. I can’t tell what, I need to revisit the article. It is, nonetheless, an interesting read.

Speaking of Moore, he was recently part of a panel discussion at 9 Marks on the subject of complentarianism. It is Mark Dever, CJ Mahaney, Moore and Randy Stinson. It is available as a free MP3 download and I recommend getting it and listening. Moore has some provocative statements such as “many people are involved in same sex marriages and they don’t even know it” and “complementarianism, I prefer patriarchy.” They also mention that IVP refuses to publish complementarian materials. However, Crossway Books has committed to publish compementarian stuff.

Finally, Wayne Grudem has published a new book on complementarianism. The title sounds a bit alarmist; “Evangelical Feminism: A New Path To Liberalism?” But having read and listened to Grudem a lot, I’m pretty sure it isn’t just paranoid.