“The Lord of the Sabbath: Who We Are & Who Jesus Is”
Mark 2:23-28
May 22, 2022
Faith Presbyterian Church – Morning Service
Pastor Nicoletti
The Reading of the Word
This morning we continue in the Gospel of Mark, as we come to Mark 2:23-28.
Please do listen carefully, for this is God’s word for us this morning.
2:23 One Sabbath he [that is, Jesus] was going through the grainfields, and as they made their way, his disciples began to pluck heads of grain. 24 And the Pharisees were saying to him, “Look, why are they doing what is not lawful on the Sabbath?” 25 And he said to them, “Have you never read what David did, when he was in need and was hungry, he and those who were with him: 26 how he entered the house of God, in the time of Abiathar the high priest, and ate the bread of the Presence, which it is not lawful for any but the priests to eat, and also gave it to those who were with him?” 27 And he said to them, “The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath. 28 So the Son of Man is lord even of the Sabbath.”
This is the word of the Lord. (Thanks be to God.)
“All people are like grass, and all their glory is like the flowers of the field; the grass withers and the flowers fall, but the word of the Lord endures forever.” [1 Peter 1:24-25]
Let’s pray …
Prayer of Illumination
Lord, we gather this morning because we love your Word.
We want it to be our meditation day and night.
We know that your revelation to us
offers more wisdom than the wise of the world,
it gives us more understanding than the great thinkers of the world,
it gives us a deeper understanding than the old and experienced of the world.
It holds us back from evil,
and keeps us from straying from you.
And it is sweet to us,
sweeter than honey in our mouths.
Through it we gain understanding,
and we learn to reject every false way.
Teach us now from your word, we ask.
In Jesus’s name. Amen
[Based on Psalm 119:97-104]
Introduction
Our text this morning begins with a question about religious observance, but then it quickly leads into deeper questions about identity: about who certain people in the text really are.
And so as we consider our text, we’ll begin with a “What” but that will then lead us to three “Who”s.
We’ll begin by considering what the law teaches.
And that dispute will then lead us to consider who Jesus really is, who the Pharisees really are, and who Jesus’s disciples are supposed to be.
What the Law Teaches
With that in mind, we begin with the “What”: What does the law really teach?
That seems to be the substance of the Pharisee’s question – or really of their assertion. They don’t ask Jesus about the Sabbath, or how he understands it, but rather, they ask in verse twenty-four: “Why are [your disciples] doing what is not lawful on the Sabbath?”
They start with the premise that Jesus’s disciples are breaking the Sabbath. We need to begin by asking whether that premise is actually correct. Are the disciples actually breaking the Biblical Sabbath regulations?
And a consideration of the Scriptures would force us, I think, to say no.
The Pharisees here are dealing with the overlap of two different Old Testament laws.
The first comes from Deuteronomy 23. There we read: “If you go into your neighbor’s vineyard, you may eat your fill of grapes, as many as you wish, but you shall not put any in your bag.If you go into your neighbor’s standing grain, you may pluck the ears with your hand, but you shall not put a sickle to your neighbor’s standing grain.” [23:24-25]
This was a law that was aimed especially to give rest and relief to travelers. Whether it was poor travelers in need of food, or other travelers who found themselves without food for some other reason, God, in his law, intended to give relief to travelers in Israel, by allowing them to pick grapes or grain from the fields they passed through, in order to alleviate the burden of their hunger. They were not to abuse this by gathering more for later – but could take enough to relieve their hunger in the moment. Either way, the law was intended as a way for God to give rest and relief to his people. That’s the first law under consideration here.
The second is the Sabbath law. Let’s hear a summary of that from Deuteronomy 5. There we read: “Observe the Sabbath day, to keep it holy, as the Lord [Yahweh] your God commanded you. Six days you shall labor and do all your work, but the seventh day is a Sabbath to Yahweh your God. On it you shall not do any work, you or your son or your daughter or your male servant or your female servant, or your ox or your donkey or any of your livestock, or the sojourner who is within your gates, that your male servant and your female servant may rest as well as you. You shall remember that you were a slave in the land of Egypt, and Yahweh your God brought you out from there with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm. Therefore Yahweh your God commanded you to keep the Sabbath day.”
In this law too, the theme is rest and the relief of burdens. First, the individual Israelite was called on to rest on the Sabbath, and receive that as a gift from the Lord. Second, this commandment calls on God’s people to give rest and relief to others. A lot of the command is about God calling on those in authority to giverest to those under their authority. They are to give rest to their sons and daughters, to their male and female servants, to their livestock, to the non-Israelites among them, so that, God says, “your male servant and female servant may rest as well as you.”
And then third, the Sabbath command here roots that rest and relief in God’s redemptive work and aims.
So, both Deuteronomy 23 and Deuteronomy 5 – both the law for travelers picking grain, and the laws about the Sabbath – are focused on God relieving the burdens of his people and calling on his people to relieve the burdens of others.
Yet somehow the Pharisees combine these two laws in a way that reverses that theme. They have combined them in a way that makes them into a burden to be placed on other people, rather than taken off.
The essential logic of the Pharisees is that, while travelers could have their hunger relieved by God’s provision on any other day of the week, on the Sabbath, they could not. On the Sabbath they had to take on the burden of hunger. The Pharisees had used one law in which God gave relief to and blessed his people, to cancel out another law with the very same goal.
And the idea that God intended for one of these laws to cancel out the other goes against the grain of the Hebrew Scriptures. The Sabbath was to be a day of feasting, a holy convocation, a time of rest and worship and celebration that reminded Israel of their redemption and salvation. And the Pharisees had turned it, at least for some, into a fast – into a burden, into something to be endured.
We see a contradiction of this in the Old Testament itself. Even Nehemiah – a strong advocate for Sabbath observance – knew that the Sabbath was no reason to refrain from the generous meals prepared for those at his table “each day.” [Nehemiah 5:17-19; from Horne, 64]
What we see in all of this is that the Pharisees were wrong. It’s not that Jesus and the disciples had found a loophole in the Sabbath laws that allowed them to do what they were doing, and the Pharisees had missed it. The Pharisees had taken two laws meant by God to give relief and blessing to his people, and they had turned them into an unbiblical burden for God’s people. And Jesus was correcting their error by restoring the spirit of God’s law. [Leithart, The Four, 68-70, 136, 183,193; Horne, 62-64]
That’s what’s happening here. What’s strange then, is that Jesus doesn’t just say that. In other places he does. At other times in his ministry he demonstrates how the Pharisees have twisted the true intention of the law. But not here. Here he says something else. Here he takes this moment as an opportunity to confront the Pharisees about something deeper: about who he is, who they are being, and who his disciples are supposed to be.
Who Jesus Is
And to make these points, Jesus directs their attention to the events of First Samuel 20-22.
At that point in Israel’s history, Saul was King of Israel, but he had rejected God, and had become corrupt and self-seeking. And so God had secretly anointed David to be Israel’s next king. David does not attack Saul, but he merely serves under Saul. But then Saul, out of envy and self-promotion, turned on David. In First Samuel 20 Saul openly declared his intention to kill David, and David went on the run.
Then in chapter twenty-one, David and his men – his soldiers – came to the tabernacle. And there David sought food for his men from the priests, who did not know about the split between David and Saul. It’s in that context that Ahimelech, the high priest at the time, gave the holy bread to David, in order to feed his men on their journey.
Now, one of the first things we should note is that by bringing this story up, Jesus is drawing a parallel between himself and David. [Edwards, 96]
And just a little bit of reflection helps us see why.
David, at that point, was anointed to be Israel’s true king, but he was not yet on the throne. He was the one God had appointed to rule, but at that moment others seemed to be in charge. He had been anointed as the Lord of God’s people, but the people had not, at that time, accepted him in that role.
By pointing to David in that moment, and by making the connection to himself, Jesus seems to be doing more than just arguing about the application of the law. Jesus is telling the people who he is. [Horne, 68-69]
Because Jesus too had been appointed by God to rule, but at that moment, others seemed to be in charge, as the Romans dominated political life, and the Pharisees and Sadducees dominated religious life. Jesus too was the one God had given spiritual authority to, though the Pharisees seemed to have more influence at the moment than he did. Jesus too, in his baptism, and in the descent of the Holy Spirit, had been anointed as the Lord – the Messiah – of God’s people, but the people had not, so far, accepted him in that role.
That is the first thing we need to see that Jesus is saying here about who he is. He is the promised Messiah, the Anointed Son of David, the King of Israel, given by God himself … even if at that point God’s people have not yet recognized him.
That’s what we see in verses twenty-five and twenty-six. But then, in verses twenty-seven and twenty-eight, Jesus goes even further.
In verse twenty-seven, Jesus clarifies the intention of the Sabbath itself. He does this by pointing back to its creation. [Edwards, 96]
But then, he once again draws the focus back to himself, declaring: “The Son of Man is lord even of the Sabbath.”
Jesus here is declaring that he has authority over the Sabbath – that the Sabbath is his. But just a verse earlier he pointed out that God is the one who made the Sabbath. And so, once again, in declaring himself Lord of the Sabbath, Jesus claims for himself the privileges, and thus the identity, of God. [Edwards, 97]
Jesus again indicates that he is more than a man. He again makes claims for himself that only make sense if we recognize that he is God the Son come in the flesh. He made the Sabbath. He made humanity. So he knows the proper relationship between them. That is where Jesus’s statements in these verses lead us.
And if Jesus made the Sabbath, and Jesus is Lord of the Sabbath, then the Sabbath is ultimately about him.
And the same is true not only of the Sabbath, but of all the things of God – both then and now.
Our Christian lives, our faith, our spiritual practices, our worship, our obedience to God’s word, our Christian ways of relating to others … these are not to be, for us, just personal values or esoteric principles or abstract spiritual concepts … but they are all to flow from and point back to Jesus Christ himself.
Is that true for you? When you come here on Sunday mornings, for example, is Jesus Christ your primary focus? When you resist temptation to sin, is Jesus Christ what orients how you do that? When you disagree with others about theology, or religion, or politics, or culture, is Jesus Christ really your primary concern? Is he what’s at the forefront of your mind in each of those areas? And if not, what usually is your focus instead?
Jesus here reminds us not only of who he is – as the True David and the Lord of the Sabbath – but he reminds us that the Sabbath, and the law, and all the things of God are ultimately about him. And we are called on to recognize that in all we say and all we do.
But what if we don’t? What if we don’t recognize the centrality of Jesus? Or what if we do in theory, but in practice and in our hearts and minds, we really make something else more central?
Who the Pharisees Are
That brings us to our next point: The identity of the Pharisees. The second “Who?” for us to consider is: Who the Pharisees are.
The Pharisees present themselves first as enforcers of Jewish Sabbath laws.
Now, many observant Jews at that time – especially among the Pharisees – had developed detailed and extensive lists about what kind of actions could and could not be performed on the Sabbath. These got very detailed. Among the Pharisaic and rabbinic traditions, things like tying or loosening a knot, sewing more than one stitch, or writing more than one letter were forbidden on the Sabbath. Medical care for non-life-threatening matters was forbidden, so that even a broken hand or foot was not allowed to be set on the Sabbath. Among even stricter Jewish groups, one might be forbidden even from ordinary actions like carrying your own child on the Sabbath. [Edwards, 93]
Now … it should only take a bit of reflection to recognize that in this process, the Pharisees and others had twisted the Sabbath laws so that in many instances they had become the opposite of their original intention. Remember, God’s intention was to give rest and relief to his people, and to call them to be an instrument of giving rest and relief to others.
But it’s not restful or a relief to have to wait a day to have your broken foot set. It’s not restful or a relief to be unable to open or close things that had been tied shut. It’s not giving rest to those under your care if you refuse to pick up your child when she is tired. And it’s not giving rest or relief to refuse to let travelers pick grain to eat when they are hungry along the way.
Those things seem obvious. And yet the Pharisees and others had made those sorts of mistakes. Rather than receiving the rest God had given, rather than trying to give relief to others, many Jewish leaders had turned the Sabbath into a burden that they not only took up themselves, but that they often placed on others.
But why did they do this? What led them to move in this direction?
Well, one problem we find at the heart of their actions is that they had made the things of God – including the Sabbath – more about them than about God.
They had taken the blessings of God for his people and tried to turn them into badges of their own identity – into means of self-promotion.
The Pharisees in our text are promoting themselves, they are asserting their authority, they are maintaining their status – and they’re doing it by pushing others down in order to try to lift themselves up. They are cutting others down in order to try to secure their own standing. And they are using the things of God in order to do that.
And Jesus’s allusions to First Samuel 20-22 makes that even more clear. Because the way that Jesus so briefly summarizes this incident with David at the tabernacle tells us that we are to consider not just that one interaction, but also what followed it.
Because Jesus says an odd thing in verse twenty-six. As I mentioned, the events that Jesus is alluding to in First Samuel 21 occurred in the interactions between David and Ahimelech, the high priest. But in verse twenty-six, Jesus describes the events as “in the time of Abiathar the high priest.” But Abiathar wasn’t the high priest when David showed up at the tabernacle. What are we to make of this?
There are a few options. One is that this is just a mistake – whether by Jesus or by Mark or by the scribal tradition. But none of those options make a lot of sense. Another is that Jesus is just talking in generalities here, and since Abiathar was the next high priest, after Ahimelech, this was close enough. But that seems less than satisfying as well.
But a third option is that Jesus had an intention when he brought up Abiathar. After all, technically, what Jesus said wasn’t incorrect – it was “the time of” Abiathar. [Edwards, 95] But it was an odd way to put it. By evoking Abiathar, Jesus seems to be stretching out the Old Testament allusion he is making here to at least one more chapter.
Remember, when Jesus and the New Testament writers cite or allude to the Hebrew Scriptures, they’re usually not just bringing up one verse or phrase, but often their goal is to evoke the whole passage that the citation comes from. They want us to consider what they are saying or what’s going on in light of that larger Old Testament story or passage that they point us to. [Horne, 69]
So, with that in mind, what is the relevance of Abiathar in this story?
Well, the events of First Samuel 21 don’t end with David getting the bread in order to feed his men. The repercussions of that interaction carry on into the next chapter. And it’s there that Abiathar comes into the picture.
In chapter twenty-two, Saul continues to pursue David. And as he does, he learns of the provisions that David had received from Ahimelech the high priest, at the house of God. Saul summons Ahimelech and all the priests to come to him. And Saul asks for an explanation. Ahimelech responds, truthfully, that he had no idea about David and Saul’s falling out. He stresses that he in no way intended to undermine Saul. This is true, and, in fact, David was careful to maintain that ignorance and deniability for Ahimelech and the priests, as a way of protecting them. But in the end, it was not enough protection. Saul orders the slaughter of the priests, and all in their city, and Doeg the Edomite carries the order out.
One son of Ahimelech escapes the slaughter, and comes to David at the end of chapter twenty-two. And that man is Abiathar – the one whom Jesus mentions in our text.
It seems to me that in mentioning Abiathar, Jesus extends the portion of First Samuel he is alluding to, to include not just the actions of David, but also the response of Saul, which Abiathar had narrowly escaped.
And Saul’s actions were striking, because in them he too took the things of God, and made them primarily about himself.
First, Saul took the priesthood of God, and rather than seeing it as something primarily oriented toward God, he treated it as something primarily oriented towards himself. In Saul’s mind, it seems, the primary purpose of the priesthood was not to be an instrument by which God blessed his people, but to be a means of promoting and protecting Saul himself. And so, when they fail to work for his benefit, Saul orders the priests to be killed.
Second, Saul took the herem warfare of God, and that too he made not primarily about faithfulness to God, but about faithfulness to him. Herem warfare was a unique form of warfare that called for total destruction. It could be called for only by God, and it was to be judgment God placed on a people who had utterly rejected him. But in First Samuel 22 Saul carries out herem warfare on the city of the priests, because he perceived them as not being faithful enough to him.
In this passage, Saul took the things of God, and he made them primarily about himself. Which is striking when we see how Jesus is pointing us back to this story.
Because it’s the same thing the Pharisees are doing in our text.
The Sabbath laws belonged to God. They were to be primarily about God, and a means of God blessing and giving rest to his people. But the Pharisees had made the Sabbath about them. The Pharisees had made the Sabbath into an identity badge for themselves. Their practices asserted their status. Their policing of others asserted their authority and their religious standing. Their cutting others down who did not follow their interpretation of the Sabbath was a way of making themselves seem superior.
The Pharisees had taken the things of God, and twisted them, making them a way of cutting others down in order to assert their own standing and superiority.
The question is: Do you see that pattern in your own life? In what area of life are you … maybe at least a bit … like the Pharisees here … like Saul in First Samuel 22?
Where are you tempted to take the things of God and make them about you, by using them to cut others down so that you look a bit taller?
This pattern of behavior is rampant in our culture. It’s everywhere. Discussions about politics, about culture, about ethics, all quickly move from the concepts themselves, to forms of attack on those who disagree. Just think how much less time people often spend discussing the good that they want to pursue, when compared with the time that they spend describing how awful those who disagree with them are. Or, in a Christian context, think how common it is for people to spend much more energy emphasizing why they are the good guys, than they spend showing how the issue at hand is rooted in and points to the nature of God himself.
We live in a Pharisaical age. It is a secular age, but still a Pharisaical one. Whether on the left or the right, whether Christian or non-Christian, our public discourse is overwhelmingly about us, not about God. And a common pattern is our attempts, like the Pharisees and like Saul, to push ourselves up but cutting other people down.
But those patterns show up not just in our public discourse, but also in our personal relationships.
Where do you see it in your own life? Where might you be following the ways of the Pharisees?
We may be following the ways of the Pharisees when our focus becomes less and less on our own need for spiritual growth, less and less on our own calling to give rest and relief to others, and more and more on attacking or critiquing those with sins that are different from ours … or policing those with struggles that are different from ours.
We may be following the ways of the Pharisees when we bring God’s word to people more often to condemn them than to bless them, more often to lay a heavy burden on them than to point them to the One who offers them rest.
We may be following the ways of the Pharisees, when we feel threatened by those who are doing well, and when we feel a little shot of self-satisfaction when we learn about the failings of others.
We may be following the ways of the Pharisees when we want to tell others about those who are struggling, rather than seeking ways to quietly come alongside them, and offer them help, and rest, without drawing any attention to ourselves.
We may be following the ways of the Pharisees when our spiritual responses to others look more like laying burdens on them, than bearing their burdens, or when we are more likely to cut others down than to build them up in Christ.
So where do you see the patterns and the temptations of the Pharisees in your own life?
Jesus calls us to see it. And Jesus calls us to turn from it. He calls us to repent.
Who Jesus’s Disciples Are
But if we are to turn from the patterns of the Pharisees, then what are we to turn towards?
That leads us to our final “Who” as we consider this text: Who Jesus’s disciples are supposed to be.
In our text from Mark, the role of Jesus’s disciples seems kind of minimal. They say nothing. They just pick heads of grain. That’s all they do.
The disciples don’t explain their own spiritual place in this whole set up. But Jesus does. He does in verse twenty-six.
There Jesus makes the extra point that not only did David eat the bread of the presence, but he gave it to those who were with him. If Jesus is drawing a parallel between himself and David, then he also seems to be drawing a parallel between his disciples and those who were with David. And those who were with David, in First Samuel 21, were his men – his soldiers.
And the details of that are interesting.
In First Samuel 21, before he agrees to give the bread of the presence to them, Ahimelech the high priest essentially asks David if his soldiers are ritually clean. David, in response, goes a step further. David doesn’t just confirm that the men are ritually clean. He says in verse five that they are “holy.” Now, ritual holiness is something different from ritual cleanness. Ritual holiness signifies a consecration, a setting apart of someone or something for special service to God. Priests were consecrated. And David is saying that his men are not only ritually clean, but they have gone further than that and are consecrated as ritually holy. David and his men are not priests … but there is a priestly character to them in their service. They have been consecrated for God’s work like the priests. And they belong in some sense then among the priests. That, in part, is why it is appropriate for them to receive the consecrated bread from the tabernacle. [Leithart, A Son to Me, 127]
And that gives us a picture, it would seem, of how Jesus understands his disciples. They are to be, as the Apostle Peter would put it, “a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for [God’s] own possession.” [1 Peter 2:9] They were to be, as the Apostle Paul put it, “good soldier[s] of Jesus Christ.” [2 Timothy 2:3]
That means that if you are a disciple of Jesus, then you have a ministry. You have a priestly calling. You have a part as a spiritual soldier in the purposes of Christ’s kingdom.
That is the connection being made here.
And there are at least three things we need to take from that.
First, we need to note that in the service of Christ, his provision precedes our work. His provision precedes our work. David’s men receive the bread before they venture into Gath. Jesus’s disciples receive the grain before they arrive in the next village. And we receive Christ’s provisions for us in the gospel before we are called on to fight for his kingdom.
And that matters … because the tragedy of the Pharisees is that they get this backwards. They want to achieve their accomplishments first and then receive a blessing from the Lord. But that leads to a frantic need to prove themselves. And in that effort, they so often resort to tearing others down in order to prove their own superiority. When we begin by trying to prove ourselves, then right out of the gate, we make the things of God about us, rather than him.
God calls us instead to begin with his provision – to receive the good things he has for us, by grace. He feeds us first with his holy bread from heaven. And then he calls us to his work. Which means that the purpose of the work we do for his kingdom is not to prove ourselves – it’s not to assert our status or display our superiority. We already have God’s provision for us in the gospel. Our work, therefore, is about him. It’s about serving his kingdom. It’s about working for his purposes. It’s about blessing his people. It’s about displaying his glory. But we can only do that if we recognize that in the gospel, his provision for us precedes our work for him. That’s the first thing for us to take from the role of the disciples.
The second thing for us to take from the disciples is to see that we are called to be Christ’s priestly soldiers in this world. In the gospel, the provision does precede the work – the grace of the gospel comes before the tasks of service and sacrifice.
But the work of the kingdom – the tasks of service and sacrifice – are still there. They are still very real. They are still our calling.
If the disciples were paying attention to Jesus’s words, they should have rejoiced over the status that Jesus was giving them. But then they also should have been taken aback by the weightiness of their calling.
David’s men, in the events that followed their time at the tabernacle, had a difficult calling. Following David meant fighting battles. It meant sacrifice. It meant suffering. So does the life of discipleship.
Are those difficulties a part of your life?
If someone were to look over your life, would they see places where you are sacrificially serving the Lord? Would they see places where you are walking a difficult path in order to promote his kingdom? Would they see that you are a soldier of the cross, dying to yourself in order to live for Christ, bearing your cross in order to relieve the burdens of others, building God’s people up without concern for your own status?
The second thing we should take from the disciples is that we should examine our lives to see if we too are living as Christ’s priestly soldiers in this world.
And then, third and finally, we should look at ourselves, and ask if we are continually seeking the Lord’s provision. The Christian life may start with the Lord’s provision. But the provision doesn’t end there.
Are you laying hold of the provision and rest that the Lord has given to you as a member of his people?
There are many things we could consider here, but we could begin just with the initial subject of our text: with the Sabbath itself.
Are you laying hold of the rest and the relief and the blessings that the Lord offers you in his Sabbath?
Are you gathering here with God’s people regularly for worship? Are you making a point to be here every Lord’s Day that you’re able, not as a way of proving yourself to others, but as a way of receiving the provision and the blessing that the Lord offers you here?
Do you take advantage of our evening service, not out of guilt or out of a desire to show you’re one of the especially spiritual people – but out of a desire to receive once again from God’s Word, and be once again with God’s people?
Do you attend to the means of grace, tuning in mentally and spiritually for the worship, and for the Word, and for the Lord’s Supper?
Are you intentional about actually resting on the Sabbath? Do you try to really put down your regular burdens of the week to spend quality time delighting in God’s gifts to you: in your family or in Christian friends, or in God’s many blessings – do you seek to receive those things on the Lord’s Day, as a means of spiritual refreshing and blessing?
The Sabbath, like so many things in the gospel, is intended by God to be a delight – to be a gracious provision for us, his people. Are you seeking and willingly receiving all that he offers you in it?
Conclusion
Our God calls his people to very difficult things. But our God is not a taskmaster. He wants to bless his people. He wants to relieve their burdens. He wants to give them true rest.
That is what he offers you in the gospel.
Jesus Christ is the Lord of the Sabbath. Let us serve his kingdom, rather than our own. And as we do, let us seek from him the Sabbath rest that only he can give.
Amen.
—
This sermon draws on material from:
Bayer, Hans. Introduction and notes to Mark in The ESV Study Bible. Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2008.
Edwards, James R. The Gospel According to Mark. The Pillar New Testament Commentary. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2002.
Horne, Mark. The Victory According to Mark: An Exposition of the Second Gospel. Moscow, ID: Canon Press, 2003.
Leithart, Peter J. A Son to Me: An Exposition of 1 & 2 Samuel. Moscow, ID: Canon Press, 2003.
Leithart, Peter J. The Four: A Survey of the Gospels. Moscow, ID: Canon Press, 2010.
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