REC Jesus: Lord of the Sabbath

Recap

So I started this series because we got this data on our church that says that we are a stressed people.

That’s probably true of most people, most of the time

Marriages are stressed

Kids are stressed

I mean think about life for a minute

Endless child drop-offs

Endless work

Endless bills

Endless burdens

There is this relentlessness of life that begins to be oppressive.

Our lives become about the tyranny of the urgent!

The entire premise is that transformation comes out of the formation of new rhythms….Something has to change!

So we spent the first month…and today talking about Sabbath…

This Biblical Principal that actually is an invitation into the heart and life of God..

It is an invitation to stop…

Where everything else in life is GO GO GO…The Sabbath invites us to take a day and cease our work

So we have looked at a number of things through this series…

1. Just this need to eliminate hurry out of our lives…And we need to be ruthless about that…Get rid of this sense that the monkey is always on our back!

2. Jesus actually had a mission to give us all his rest…He actually desires to free us from the tyranny that is our modern busy schedule…Last week we called that a Jubilee Mission.

So this Sunday I want to end this series with what Jesus thought of the Sabbath.

So I want to start one last time by looking at this passage that we have looked at all through this series and I hope that by now it is burned into your brains!

Matthew 11:25–28 NIV

At that time Jesus said, “I praise you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because you have hidden these things from the wise and learned, and revealed them to little children. Yes, Father, for this is what you were pleased to do. “All things have been committed to me by my Father. No one knows the Son except the Father, and no one knows the Father except the Son and those to whom the Son chooses to reveal him. “Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest.

So we haven’t looked at the context of this verse yet…

Jesus starts this by upsetting the power structures of Israel…

He says…You have hidden these things from the wised and learned…Who are the wise and learned around Jesus? Pharisees, teachers of the law…The religious establishment…The ones who have been critical of Jesus

and he is saying that little children are getting the kingdom of God and you are not...

In fact Jesus’ disciples who are not learned people, are probably the “children” that Jesus is talking about, it could have been literal children too…The point is that the people who are appointed as wise and teachers and not getting what Jesus is doing

Jesus is almost like....God you love doing this! It’s actually a huge theme though scripture…

What the world exalts as important, whether it be money, knowledge, power…God tends to go after the poor the weak and the broken...

We see it all through Jesus’ ministry…You see it all through the Old Testament too!

And what we are going to see in the next couple of stories is that this plays out

Then Jesus says, “All things have been committed to me by my father” And basically Jesus says that the son…so him… it is his job to reveal the father…

And I want to pause on this point for a second. There is a danger especially with long term followers of Jesus…Here is the danger…

We have a tendency to take the words of Jesus and make them rules to follow…And there is actually some genuine conviction that is good behind all of this…the conviction is that the words of Jesus have authority and they absolutely do…

But pretty soon us long term followers of Jesus can take the word of Jesus and begin worshiping those rather than him!

It is a really subtle shift…

See the words of Jesus are meant to reveal the character of the father …

And his deepest desire is not that we are really good rule followers but that we are with him enough to be transformed into the character of the father

I think to take the words of Jesus and immediately make them into rules is to miss the character of the father

So Jesus says Look…I only do what I see the father doing: I reveal the father’s character

One of the problems that plagues the church is called Legalism…It is when we take the words of Jesus and make them into a set of rules…You make your life out to be a checkbox of following the rules…

You make life with Jesus about a checklist of rules rather than about a relationship that reveals the father…

Following Jesus is not about making his words into strict rules…It is about being transformed by them and entering deeper into the character of the father…

The gift of sabbath is to be with Jesus, not to work for Jesus

And I think this point is so key. So many times we take the words of Jesus and we make them into rules without realizing that these words reflect the character of the father…and to immediately make them a rule misses the Character of the father

So all of this to say

Jesus says that the sabbath was made for man as this profound gift…

It’s not the place to make it into a new legalism

So wash your car, go grocery shopping…Eat with family…But while you are doing all of that, you are somehow spending time with the father…Acknowledging God’s presence in ordinary life!

Thats not the point! The original sabbatical point is to spend time with the father!

So Jesus Goes on to our passage we have looked at at least 5 times in this series: and remember…He is saying right before this that the son reveals the father’s character

Matthew 11:28–30 NIV

“Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.”

Everyone who is tired I will give you rest

So what Jesus is implying here is that everyone is under a yoke of some kind....Everyone has some kind of burden

What Jesus is offering is to “Let me disperse burdens the way that they are supposed to be dispersed”

You are carrying too much! you are taking on too much!

Resting with God is to give your burdens to him while he gives you his character

The metaphor of the Yoke was commonly used to express subordination and loyalty to God…

Especially obedience to the Torah In the book of Jeremiah, Jeremiah speaks to the religious leaders who had broken the yoke of God

Jeremiah 5:5 NIV

So I will go to the leaders and speak to them; surely they know the way of the Lord, the requirements of their God.” But with one accord they too had broken off the yoke and torn off the bonds.

The idea is that obeying the law is a type of yoke!

But the very people of God who were tasked with upholding the yoke of the law were breaking it...

So in Chapter 6 of Jeremiah God says

Jeremiah 6:16 NIV

This is what the Lord says: “Stand at the crossroads and look; ask for the ancient paths, ask where the good way is, and walk in it, and you will find rest for your souls. But you said, ‘We will not walk in it.’

The rabbis often spoke of the Torah or the Yoke of the Kingdom of Heaven and if you just follow God’s wisdom then you will have rest…

See Jeremiah was dealing with the same problem as Jesus.

The pharisees were taking God’s words and adding all kinds of stuff to it…(There is a simplicity in just following God’s word!)

In Jeremiah’s day they were giving lip service to God but not really following him

Jesus now is setting the idea in motion that the Yoke is found in a person…In the person of Jesus....And it is kind of like what Jesus said at the beginning of the sermon on the mount. He is not doing away with the law but he is showing God’s true intentions, his character through it...

So Jesus says come to me…I’ll show you this true rest that your ancestors couldn't achieve …I’ll show you the Yoke that Jeremiah talked about!

Jesus will give you rest because he is the embodiment of the word of God…Jesus is the word of God who has become flesh!

And the next two stories of Jesus are just going to pile on conflict because Jesus will live out God’s true intention of the sabbath

Matthew 12:1–2 NIV

At that time Jesus went through the grainfields on the Sabbath. His disciples were hungry and began to pick some heads of grain and eat them. When the Pharisees saw this, they said to him, “Look! Your disciples are doing what is unlawful on the Sabbath.”

So let’s pause right here… last week we talked about the year of Jubilee…And one of the things that happens on that year is that the fields are supposed to lay fallow and when you are hungry you just go pick grain and eat..

And last week we saw that Jesus’s ministry inaugurated this forever jubilee.

So What is Jesus doing? He is celebrating Jubilee…He’s just walking through this garden like environment eating the grain showing people what it is really like on the sabbath...

What was the first sabbath? It was being with God in creation! Enjoying the creation with the father...

So just a minute ago we have Jesus saying…The father and I are One…He has said, look I am reflecting the father’s character!

Jesus is saying, I am showing you what God wants on the sabbath! To have communion with People!

And These Pharisees are just looking for something that Jesus did wrong?

We all know people like that right? They look for the wrong thing instead of the right thing?

And if you dont know someone like that…maybe your that person!

So the Pharisees were so concerned about keeping the Sabbath that over the years that they went back to the Bible and were trying to answer the question....What is considered work?

So they identified 39 types of work

The first Set of rules is called “Order of the Bread”

Rule three under section one is “Reaping the harvest”

So remember: Jesus just says in Chapter 11, I am the embodiment of the torah…if you’ve seen me, you’ve seen God!

And now these Pharisees are livid! They are like You are breaking the bread rules!

So Jesus’ reply...

Matthew 12:3–8 NIV

He answered, “Haven’t you read what David did when he and his companions were hungry? He entered the house of God, and he and his companions ate the consecrated bread—which was not lawful for them to do, but only for the priests. Or haven’t you read in the Law that the priests on Sabbath duty in the temple desecrate the Sabbath and yet are innocent? I tell you that something greater than the temple is here. If you had known what these words mean, ‘I desire mercy, not sacrifice,’ you would not have condemned the innocent. For the Son of Man is Lord of the Sabbath.”

I love that Jesus and his disciples are knowingly breaking a bread rule and so Jesus gives them a bread example.

Have you read the Bible?

Jesus is quoting this story about David who was fleeing from King Saul…

In the story, King Saul was the people’s king but David was anointed as God’s king for Israel...

David was sort of this undercover king that no one knew about

So David is fleeing Saul. He is the true king…but he is undercover and Saul is persecuting David

So Jesus is putting himself in the place of the true but unrecognized king of Israel and Jesus puts the Pharisees in the place of Saul, the illegitimate leader

So if Jesus wasn't in enough trouble now he is comparing himself with king David …and he is telling the Pharisees..Yeah the people may see you as their leaders…But I am the true king here!

And furthermore…The story about king David is offensive to people too because David went into the temple and ate this special sabbath bread on the sabbath…He was acting like a priest!

And Jesus said…You know those rules you made?

the priest break them all the time as part of their service to God

What we have to recall is that the temple is a symbol for Eden…

So David eating the bread on the sabbath is a priestly practice…It makes us look back to Adam and Eve…They were the first people to preside over a sabbath…the first priests who ruled over eden

and the whole point of the sabbath is to remember the garden…where you were with God…it is to remember what was lost due to sin.

So Jesus tells the Pharisees in Verse 6

Matthew 12:6 NIV

I tell you that something greater than the temple is here.

So David Planned the temple

His son Solomon built it...

But Jesus is the ultimate embodiment of it...

This would make the Pharisees mad!

So we have to remember that the temple symbolizes Eden…And what that meant was the presence of God…So the temple was literally, heaven on Earth! God dwelling with humans!

And when you think back to Genesis, when did that happen in the order of creation? The 7th day!

So Jesus views himself as this living sabbath walking around among the people

Jesus views himself as the personal embodiment of what it means to sabbath.

Jesus is jubilee…

Jesus is true freedom

In Jesus there is real forgiveness

and to top off what Jesus is saying here he ends it with this phrase

Matthew 12:8 NIV

For the Son of Man is Lord of the Sabbath.”

We have talked about this phrase Son of Man before here...

And I won’t go back over it all, but that Phrase SON of MAN is bible for saying…I am the promised messiah!

And I, The MESSIAH am the Lord over the Sabbath!

Some people treat Jesus as if he is dismissive of the sabbath, but not at all!

Jesus is talking it back to its original meaning.

He is rescuing the sabbath from the multitude of laws that turned the sabbath into a legalistic exercise.

And Jesus says that he is LORD OF THE SABBATH!

That means that Jesus is picture of what the Sabbath looks like…Everything that Jesus does is this jubilee like, freedom giving sabbath...

There is another point I want to make of what it means that Jesus is the lord of the sabbath, there is also a salvation:

In the sabbath of Jesus, he saves us from the work of our salvation

Think about this:

Salvation isn't about strict observance to rules…That’s work

That is what the book of Leviticus is all about…It shows you the steps that you have to take to be forgiven of your sins.

It’s not about what you have done…Thats work

Its not about what you do for Jesus or what you bring to the table

It’s about what Jesus has done

Romans 3:23–25 NIV

for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and all are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus. God presented Christ as a sacrifice of atonement, through the shedding of his blood—to be received by faith. He did this to demonstrate his righteousness, because in his forbearance he had left the sins committed beforehand unpunished—

Jesus is the Lord of the sabbath

It means that Jesus delights in taking your burdens…Jesus delights in taking your pain…He loves taking on your brokeness

It means he will take your sin on and he is happy to do it

Challenge

When Jesus was about to give his famous Yoke Talk...

Come to me all who are weary

he first says:

Matthew 11:27 NIV

“All things have been committed to me by my Father. No one knows the Son except the Father, and no one knows the Father except the Son and those to whom the Son chooses to reveal him.

Why does he say this? before talking about the sabbath and then doing something so controversial on the sabbath?

And I think the answer is that Jesus models the “With God Life”

The With God life is the Sabbath Life

The reason we have been doing this entire series is to encourage anyone who is stressed, anyone who is broken to take a day and rest…

And not just to lay around and play on your phone but to take intentional time in prayer and reading scripture and being with God!

See….

Many times we want to do FOR God…This is the pharisees…And they just keep doing for God over and over and over

And even their sabbath rest they are doing it FOR God…They have to work to keep the rules! Their faith becomes a performance for Jesus Merritt badges or

And when you condition yourself to do FOR God over and over again then God becomes a taskmaster and your religion will ultimately become oppressive

Your life will be about judging everyone else who isn't living the way that you are living, because you're a martyr…you're living for God and they are not!

And here is the deal. Its ok to serve God and work for him…BUT can not do FOR God…Without being WITH God

Let me give you an example…The Prolific Christian Author, Pastor and Professor NT Wright once asked his mentor how long he should spend in prayer before giving a sermon…And The response was, well how long do you plan to preach for?

NT Wright said, I don’t know maybe 45 minutes...

And his mentor said then you had better plan on 45 minutes least you go stand out there on one leg...

Now I can not live your life for you…But what I can tell you is the more that you do for God the more time you will need to spend with God. The more you say I am going to serve the church...

I am going to be an usher

a greeter

work in children's ministry

disciple my family...

Look God I am going to do this all for you…See Jesus doesn’t want your performance he wants your heart

Serving is great! …But are you serving out of being with God?

Jesus is Lord of the Sabbath and he wants to unburden you by being with you in relationship

As the last act of this series: I want to invite you to break the sabbath bread laws…

INVITE THE BAND UP

Today we are offering communion

if your here and you have never celebrated communion before it is the embodiment of what Jesus wants you to experience in Sabbath…

It is coming to him and placing your burdens at the table and picking up his life

On the night that Jesus was betrayed

he took the bread and proclaimed that it was his body that is for you

then he took the cup and said he would spill his blood as a new promise for his people

for the forgiveness of sins

You no longer need to work for your salvation because the lord of the Sabbath did it all on the cross!

Communion is a declaration that you trust in the body and the blood of Jesus

it is a pronouncement that Jesus is Lord