Take and Give Sabbath

“Peace be with you.”

Read: Mark 2:23-3:6

“Let’s Pray: Father may your will be done, Jesus may your word be proclaimed, and Spirit may your work be accomplished in us we pray. Amen.”

Sabbath

Exodus 20:8–11 NASB95

8 “Remember the sabbath day, to keep it holy. 9 “Six days you shall labor and do all your work, 10 but the seventh day is a sabbath of the Lord your God; in it you shall not do any work, you or your son or your daughter, your male or your female servant or your cattle or your sojourner who stays with you. 11 “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.

A. The DO’s and the DON’Ts

This is one of the ten commandments that is not in the negative. There are 8 commandments that tell us “DO NOT” but Remember the Sabbath and Keep it Holy is a commandment that tells us to “DO”. It is a positive commandment along with honoring your father and mother (don’t worry kids we will talk about that one some other time!). It was established from the very beginning, when God created the heavens and the earth in 6 days and then rested/ceased on the 7th. God created the heavens and earth and all that is in them and then rested.

B. Less REST and More JOY

But God never gets tired. He doesn’t need to rest. So it must mean something more than just to rest. It means to cease from something in order to enjoy what has been accomplished.

Creation of the world and Sabbath are directly linked:

C. The Purpose of Creation

The Father, Son, and the Spirit, out of their love for each other and the bond they share, initiated one of the most amazing enterprises that could ever exist. As an act of celebrating His love and goodness he chose to create! Like the love that a husband shares with his bride that creates the life of a child, so too, out of the love that Love the Father, Son, and Spirit share for each other, they create the heavens and the earth; so that they could pour out this love on their creation and creation could move into their Joy. They created lamps that are designed to be lit but the light of God so that those lamps can experience God’s light and shine on, reflecting and enjoying God’s pure light. God desired to pour out from himself all of His divine attributes upon creation so that His creatures can experience his love and goodness. The purpose of creation and why we exist to bask in the glory of God and enjoy him forever. And since that is our purpose, God mandates a law that will be a constant reminder what our lives are all about.

D. The Purpose of Sabbath

If the intent for all of creation is to experience and delight in God’s loving-kindness, then it seems most wise to impart upon all creation a day that reminds all creation of God’s intentions. God establishes a rule of law that will encourage his creation to cease so that they can celebrate the work that God has accomplished for them and through them.

Now that we have framed in an understanding of what Sabbath is and what it is for, we can now turn our attention to the Gospel of Mark and draw some implications from Jesus himself concerning Sabbath.

1. The Pharisee’s have the wrong understanding of Sabbath.

Mark 2:24 NASB95

24 The Pharisees were saying to Him, “Look, why are they doing what is not lawful on the Sabbath?”

The Pharisees had developed a whole detailed system of Sabbath rules that did not maintain God’s intention for the Sabbath. They turned a law that says “DO” to a series of laws that says “DON’T”.

2. Jesus reveals what true Sabbath is.

Mark 2:27–28 NASB95

27 Jesus said to them, “The Sabbath was made for man, and not man for the Sabbath. 28 “So the Son of Man is Lord even of the Sabbath.”

Jesus points out that the Sabbath was instituted to bless man not for man to bless Sabbath. Jesus also reveals that He is the Lord, master, authority of Sabbath and that His teaching and actions on Sabbath express the true nature of what Sabbath is for.

A. Taking Sabbath.

Jesus affirms that just like the disciples who were taking grain from the fields to satisfy their hunger is fulfilling the Sabbath mandate, so too should we TAKE Sabbath to satisfy our souls with Him.

Isaiah 58:13–14 NASB95

13 “If because of the sabbath, you turn your foot From doing your own pleasure on My holy day, And call the sabbath a delight, the holy day of the Lord honorable, And honor it, desisting from your own ways, From seeking your own pleasure And speaking your own word, 14 Then you will take delight in the Lord, And I will make you ride on the heights of the earth; And I will feed you with the heritage of Jacob your father, For the mouth of the Lord has spoken.”

4. Giving Sabbath

Mark 3:1–6 NASB95

1 He entered again into a synagogue; and a man was there whose hand was withered. 2 They were watching Him to see if He would heal him on the Sabbath, so that they might accuse Him. 3 He said to the man with the withered hand, “Get up and come forward!” 4 And He said to them, “Is it lawful to do good or to do harm on the Sabbath, to save a life or to kill?” But they kept silent. 5 After looking around at them with anger, grieved at their hardness of heart, He said to the man, “Stretch out your hand.” And he stretched it out, and his hand was restored. 6 The Pharisees went out and immediately began conspiring with the Herodians against Him, as to how they might destroy Him.

Jesus also teaches us that not only should we be taking sabbath but we should also be giving sabbath. What Jesus demonstrates by healing a man with a withered hand is that helping someone else to experience rest is part of the idea of Sabbath as well. This reveals that Sabbath “keeping” is a give and take experience.

Application:

A withered hand is a metaphor for all the things we find that hinder us due to sin. Therefore, Giving Sabbath is also a means of giving people trust rest from their sins, pains, hurts, troubles. True Sabbath can only come through the what the work of Christ has accomplished for us- Salvation. To be set free what sin and all its effects. We must be a people who give Sabbath to those who need it so we need to be a people sharing Jesus and the salvation he offers them.

If Jesus stands against those man-made laws that interfere with humanity experiencing the life that God has intended to bless them with, what will you stand against that may interfere with your life being blessed with more of Jesus? If Jesus opposes those who do not handle Sabbath correctly, how might that affect the way you are handling Sabbath? If Jesus gets angry at those who because of their hard hearts, do not extend Sabbath to others but withhold it, how would Jesus feel about your our use of Sabbath?

Sabbath is to be taken by you but also given to others. If Sabbath has been given to you by God then you should take it. But if you have the opportunity to image God in giving someone else Sabbath then you should give it. Sabbath implies both taking and giving.

Do we see God “ceasing” after creation?

Man was the pinnacle of creation. Nothing else had been created that would bear the very image of the Godhead. Man was placed over all creation to rule over it like God rules over all things. Then we are told that after God created man on the sixth day, He rested/ceased on the Seventh. So what happened on the seventh?

Well we do not have much about what God does but we do know what man does.

Adam and Eve were in the garden, enjoying the fruits of God’s labor. Before God rests, He instructs Adam and Eve concerning the garden, to enjoy anything they please except the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Then we don’t hear from God but are then given the account of what transpires in the garden. While God was resting, the serpent was working. Adam and Eve were tempted and fell into sin. Where was God? Resting/ceasing. Then when the day of rest was over, God comes back in the cool of the day (evening time). Asks what has happened, and gets back to work now redeeming what has happened to his creation. God’s final day was spent resting, and man’s first day was spend sinning. You would think that God would institute a different command about Sabbath due to what happened while he was resting but God maintains it. What we learn is that just because things go wrong doesn’t mean we leave what is right behind. God doesn’t overreact to their offense, but He maintains what is Good.

We need to learn much about Sabbath. Sabbath helps us to be more like God, it encourages us to trust in Him, Align our focus on what He has accomplished for us and through us. It positions us to find our rest in Him. When we take rest, we live in to the goodness that God gifts us with, and when we give rest we live out that Goodness towards others.

Sabbath points to God who is finished working, but offer us rest as we continue in our work for him. God finished creation and then rested, we always have work to do and so we get to rest from it, but also rely on the fact that God completes his work and therefore we enjoy the work of his hands. For Him work is already completed, but us it has not been completed yet. We share in the joys of a finished product, but also in the joys of doing work ourselves.