Verses 1-6 “1And it came to pass, as he went into the house of one of the chief Pharisees to eat bread on the sabbath day, that they watched him.
2And, behold, there was a certain man before him which had the dropsy.
3And Jesus answering spake unto the lawyers and Pharisees, saying, Is it lawful to heal on the sabbath day?
4And they held their peace. And he took him, and healed him, and let him go;
5And answered them, saying, Which of you shall have an ass or an ox fallen into a pit, and will not straightway pull him out on the sabbath day?
6And they could not answer him again to these things.”
It is interesting that in the many incidents involving Jesus and the Sabbath that His critics were always the ones who thought that people should observe the Sabbath more strictly. And it was always Jesus who was doing things on the Sabbath that were taboo to the legalists. As a matter of fact, there is no verse in the New Testament that says that anyone must observe a Sabbath at all. Nor is there any verse that says that Sabbath breaking is a sin. The Old Testament Jewish Sabbath came to an end entirely when Jesus died. Today we observe the Lord’s day, which is not a Sabbath, but a special day commemorating the resurrection of our Savior from the dead.