Sabbath is about Jesus
Made for This • Sermon • Submitted • Presented
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Intro
Intro
Mark 2:27 (NIV)
27 Then he said to them, “The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath.
We have been in a 5 week series called Made for This,
Week 1: Sabbath is Edenic
Week 2: Sabbath is a Resistance for the sake of Remembrance
Week 3: Sabbath Teaches us to Resist Temptation, by Teaching us to Trust God
Week 4: Sabbath teaches us to be people of Freedom, people who forgive
Week 5: Sabbath Teaches us to Make Jesus Lord
Made for this, unpacking this idea of rest and Sabbath, but you may have wondered, didn’t Jesus say Man was not made for the sabbath? Is this series even true, or Biblical? Does it align with Jesus’ teachings or are we at odds with the words of Jesus?
Let’s turn to Romans 7.
4 So, my brothers and sisters, you also died to the law through the body of Christ, that you might belong to another, to him who was raised from the dead, in order that we might bear fruit for God.
No longer bound to the law. Romans 7:1-4. When we accept Christ he liberates us from all previous allegiances.
6 But now, by dying to what once bound us, we have been released from the law so that we serve in the new way of the Spirit, and not in the old way of the written code.
Serve the Spirit not the Law. Are they contradictory? Is the law bad?
7 What shall we say, then? Is the law sinful? Certainly not! Nevertheless, I would not have known what sin was had it not been for the law. For I would not have known what coveting really was if the law had not said, “You shall not covet.”
Law reveals to us our sinfulness.
8 But sin, seizing the opportunity afforded by the commandment, produced in me every kind of coveting. For apart from the law, sin was dead.
Romans 7:10–12 (NIV)
10 I found that the very commandment that was intended to bring life actually brought death. 11 For sin, seizing the opportunity afforded by the commandment, deceived me, and through the commandment put me to death. 12 So then, the law is holy, and the commandment is holy, righteous and good.
Example of telling Zae no, he then does that very thing.
1 Corinthians 15:56 (NIV)
56 The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law.
God has set us free from the Law, but freedom does not mean we are free of authority or allegiance. Rather, it means we are free to be bound to Christ.
Example, when NFL player breaks contract with current team, it frees them - they become a free agent - able to be bound to another team.
Didn’t Jesus do away with the law? NO
Matthew 5:17 (NIV)
17 “Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them.
so to adhere to the law is to honor God, but we are not to make the law our God.
Colossians 2:16–17 (NIV)
16 Therefore do not let anyone judge you by what you eat or drink, or with regard to a religious festival, a New Moon celebration or a Sabbath day. 17 These are a shadow of the things that were to come; the reality, however, is found in Christ.
Sabbath is not only Edenic, it is a foreshadow of heaven.
27 Then he said to them, “The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath.
I believe that the Sabbath was made as a weekly rhythm to help people access what they were made for. We were not made to make the Sabbath into an end in itself, rather the Sabbath is a means to a greater end. The Sabbath is the system, the tool, the spiritual discipline that God wants to use to cultivate proximity between us and Him.
28 So the Son of Man is Lord even of the Sabbath.”
We implement the sabbath not because the sabbath is our authority but because Jesus is.
28 So the Son of Man is Lord even of the Sabbath.”
The Law is not our Lord, Jesus is our Lord. The Sabbath is simply the means by which we worship The Lord.
Kyle’s Version:
Kyle’s Version:
Made For This: Sabbath Is About Jesus
Matthew 12:1-14
Who knows best, what we need most?
We are in week six of our series, Made For This. We are talking about rest and the biblical theme of Sabbath. As we’ve been going through this series we’ve invited you to join the Sabbath Challenge and it is not too late to sign-up and take part in putting the practice of having a dedicated time of rest each week. For those of us who are followers of Jesus, as we’ve gone through the series we’ve been wrestling with the idea of Sabbath and have been wondering, “Is this still required?” What does Jesus have to say about Sabbath? Finally, today, we come to hear the words of Jesus talking about Sabbath. What we are going to find is what Jesus says about Sabbath will force a deeper question for us. The question is: Who knows best, what we need most?
Turn open to Matthew 12. As you are turning there, let me set the context. Last week Ben and Jon spoke and they both quoted Jesus in Matthew 11:28 when Jesus said, “Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest.” We saw last week how God offers us rest from the pressures we face in the world. Sabbath is a reminder we can resist the economy of Pharaoh. Instead of being defined by our production, we are defined by Jesus. But right after we read this quote from Jesus, we come to a conflict. Some religious leaders come to Jesus and accuse Him of not following the Sabbath.
The Accusation: Matthew 12:1-2
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. 2 When the Pharisees saw this, they said to him, “Look! Your disciples are doing what is unlawful on the Sabbath.”
The Pharisees were a group of religious teachers during the time of Jesus. They were religious conservatives and while often they are seen opposing Jesus, they are a group that we need to understand. While they were hyper-focused on observing God’s Law, they had good reason for doing so. They believed they were still living in a type of exile, or in oppression, because the Romans were in authority over them. They believed if the people would truly follow all of God’s rules and His Law, then the Messiah would come and God would provide victory over the Roman and the people of Israel would be free. So it was a combination of National pride and a deep commitment to God’s Law which led them to be so intense and so extreme in following God’s Law.
If you want to create a system where you don’t ever break any of the Laws which God gave, then you can create a secondary system of rules to make sure you never accidentally break God’s Law. They described it as putting a fence around God’s Law. One of the Ten Commandments, which we have been talking about in this series, is the commandment to keep the Sabbath holy and not to do any work. Well, what is work? Since the instruction, “Don’t do work” is broad and a bit vague, the religious leaders and legal experts started to define work. They determined how many steps one person could take and not do work, if you were a tailor you were not to carry your sewing needle on the Sabbath so you wouldn’t be tempted to work. They even had rules about putting hot water into food versus cold water into food because one would be considered cooking and the other wouldn’t. It was detailed.
This, by the way, is human nature. We have a tendency to want to control things. For those of you who work for an employer, your organization might have an employee handbook. If it does, you might have a section on a dress code. Maybe it says, “Business casual attire is our office dress code.” No one actually knows what business casual is, by the way. So, in an attempt to be helpful, HR tries to define the dress code for organizations. I have seen some employee polices that use four pages to define business casual and have a chart of what is appropriate versus inappropriate attire. Including a section on not wearing pajamas to the office. Which you know was added for a reason.
Why would something become this detailed? Control. Business causal is too vague so in an effort to avoid any confusion or problems, we are going to get detailed and control the variables.
Spiritually, we can relate. At times, we can be like the Pharisees. Life is really unpredictable. We try to control what feels uncontrollable. We have in our minds what we think we need. We need a relationship. We need a promotion. We need financial stability. We need a new boss. We need our kids to act a certain way. We need our parents to leave us alone. Or, for the religious leaders of Israel 2,000 years ago, they needed the Romans to be defeated and leave.
For them, the way to make sure that happened was to put a fence around God’s Laws and then make sure everyone followed all of the detailed rules.
Jesus comes along, and His followers start picking grain in the field on the Sabbath day, which by the way is totally fine according to the Scripture, but it violates the Pharisees tradition and they look at Jesus and say, “What are you doing?”
At times, we can have the same experience with God. We have these things we think we need in our life and it doesn’t seem like God is going to provide those to us or He doesn’t seem to have the same urgency we do about the things we think we need and we look at God and ask, “What are you doing?”
At times, we accuse God of not caring about the things we care about.
But who knows best, what we need most?
The Authority: Matthew 12:3-8
Jesus responds to the accusation with a statement about His authority.
3 He answered, “Haven’t you read what David did when he and his companions were hungry? 4 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.
Jesus references a story they would have known from the Scriptures. Here is the situation. David became the second King of Israel, this is about 1,000 years before Jesus. David was told by God and by a prophet of God, that he would be the next king. The trouble was, another man was king. His name was Saul. Saul started out good but then lost his mind and he figured out David was eventually going to be king after him. Rather than accept that, Saul tried to murder David. David has to flee for his life and he is out on the run. David has nothing when he flees and he is hungry. He goes to the Tabernacle, which is the most holy place in Israel, later it is replaced with the Temple, and asks for food. The Priest tells David he doesn’t have any food except the consecrated bread. This bread is called the Bread of the Presence.
The Bread of the Presence was 12 loaves of bread, representing the 12 Tribes of Israel. It was baked each Sabbath and set in front of God’s presence. The only people that were allowed to eat this bread were the priests, this was part of their food and they would eat the bread that was taken away from God’s table on the Sabbath. So it was week-old bread they would eat. But no one who wasn’t a priest was allowed to eat it. Yet, here is David, the anointed King of Israel, asking to eat this special bread.
What made this okay? For one, human need goes before ritual. All of God’s Laws have always been about human flourishing. Let’s say a group of hungry people walks into our church and asks if we have any food for them and let’s assume the only food we had was several loaves of bread for communion. Would it honor God for us to say, “Oh no, you can’t have this, it is for communion.” No. It would be most honoring to God to care for the person in need.
Second, David had authority. David was part of King Saul’s court. Also, David was going to be king. He is one of the highest ranking people in Israel at the time. The priest knew that the king had authority, so if David asked for the bread, he was to give it to him.
Then Jesus says in verse 5, Or haven’t you read in the Law that the priests on Sabbath duty in the temple desecrate the Sabbath and yet are innocent?
The priests are like the church employees of their day. On the Sabbath the priest in the Temple had to do things which would have been considered work, but that didn’t violate the Sabbath because it was their job and they were commanded by God to serve in this way.
God gave them the authority to not follow the Sabbath rules because He called them to His service. God has the authority to determine what Sabbath looked like. God defined it.
The Pharisees didn’t disagree with this, by the way. They knew God defined Sabbath. But what was so misguided, is in their zeal to follow God’s Law, they thought they knew best what they needed most. Strict conformity to the Sabbath traditions. So the person they start to lecture about the Sabbath, is God Himself.
Jesus is the very Word of God in human form. Here the Pharisees are literally telling the Word of God He is wrong about what is needed most.
Don’t we do the same?
Have you ever told God what you needed from Him? Have you ever been really frustrated because you had something in your life you were worried about, something you had been praying about, something important. A financial need. An issue with work. A relationship problem. A health issue. And you are so certain that if God would just give you what you are asking for, all of your issues would be solved. After so many prayers you start to get really frustrated because you know best what you need most.
That is what these guys are doing to Jesus. He responds by informing them of His authority.
6 I tell you that something greater than the temple is here. 7 If you had known what these words mean, ‘I desire mercy, not sacrifice,’ you would not have condemned the innocent.
When we think we know best what we need most we start to value the wrong thing. When we start to value the wrong thing, we can begin to make rules up that don’t actually matter in life. What happened to these Pharisees, is they started to condemn people who were actually innocent. They thought they knew what Sabbath was all about, but they ended up creating legalistic rules and they started to declare people as wrong. To put them into their place, Jesus boldly declares:
8 For the Son of Man is Lord of the Sabbath.”
Lord of Sabbath. The word “lord” used in the Greek is a word that means boss, authority, the person who is in charge and often it was a person who was in charge of other people. For the Romans they would have said, “Caesar is Lord” and the Jews would have said, “Yahweh is Lord” and Jesus says, “I am Lord of the Sabbath.” Which is a massive statement.
If you are someone who is exploring Jesus and you are thinking, “Jesus seems like a great teacher, he was a good guy, but I’m not sure about this whole God thing…maybe that is just religious people over the years who made all that up.” I want to challenge you to sit with verse 8. This statement is Jesus declaring He is God. The Sabbath was a sign of God’s covenant with His people. For Jesus to claim He is greater than Israel’s Temple, where God dwelled, and to claim He is greater than David, and to claim He is Lord of the Sabbath is either nuts and you shouldn’t have anything to do with Jesus because He is nuts, or He is who He says He is. When you understand what Jesus actually said, you can’t be lukewarm on Him. Either you follow Him, or you want Him dead.
Which is exactly what happens next.
The Animosity: Matthew 12:9-14
9 Going on from that place, he went into their synagogue,
I love that Jesus went into the synagogue. Did you notice what Matthew says about the synagogue? He says it is “their” synagogue. When Jesus isn’t the authority of a group that group isn’t of God. At Wooddale we say Jesus is the head of this church. I just happen to be the pastor at the time. I would never want this church to be my church or our church, I want this to be His church. Just like I want my family to be His family. I want my life to belong to Jesus. So He goes into their synagogue and there is a man with a shriveled hand there.
10 and a man with a shriveled hand was there. Looking for a reason to bring charges against Jesus, they asked him, “Is it lawful to heal on the Sabbath?”
Here is the ugliness of legalism. It puts practices ahead of people. They don’t see the man and his suffering, they don’t see what hope and healing could come to his life with just a word from Jesus. Instead, they see an opportunity to show-up Jesus. They try and bait Jesus.
11 He said to them, “If any of you has a sheep and it falls into a pit on the Sabbath, will you not take hold of it and lift it out? 12 How much more valuable is a person than a sheep! Therefore it is lawful to do good on the Sabbath.”
This likely comes from some disagreement common at the time among religious people. A bunch of religious people sat around a debated if a sheep could lifted out of a pit on Sabbath, but none of those same people felt it was okay to heal a person on the Sabbath because it would be work! That is messed up.
13 Then he said to the man, “Stretch out your hand.” So he stretched it out and it was completely restored, just as sound as the other. 14 But the Pharisees went out and plotted how they might kill Jesus.
Jesus heals the man to prove it is okay to do good on the Sabbath and they wanted to kill Him. When Jesus asserts His authority, people either love Him as Lord or they want Him dead.
The Application
Sabbath never was to be about a long list of things we don’t do for the sake of religious piety. Sabbath was always about us pausing and remembering who God is, who we are, and how we can best honor God with our lives. Doing good, blessing other people, helping other people, being for other people, especially those in need, always honors God.
Sabbath was always for our good. Jesus says elsewhere that Sabbath was made for people, not people for the Sabbath.
If Sabbath was made for us, then what is the point of Sabbath? It is to remind us of what we need most. Jesus knows best what we need most. Our healing. That is why Jesus heals on the Sabbath. We need healing.
Spiritually speaking, this is what Sabbath has always been about. Sabbath, up to the time of Jesus, was this moment, one day out of each seven, which pointed forward to the coming day when what we needed most would be provided to us. When Jesus died on the cross to take the punishment for our sins and then when He rose from the grave. He defeated forever the hold sin and death had over our lives.
What we need most aren’t the things we often feel we must have from God. What we need most is what Jesus provides to us. Forgiveness. Release from sin. Spiritual healing. New Life. His own Spirit. A personal relationship with Him. The promise of a future with Him forever.
In this way, the thing Sabbath had been pointing the people of Israel toward, Jesus was there to complete. Which means, Jesus fulfilled Sabbath.
This brings us to an important question. Are we required to observe Sabbath as followers of Jesus? Required for salvation? No. Will God be grumpy with you if you don’t? No. Should we be super strict and uptight in taking a Sabbath? No! Should we even practice Sabbath?
I would say yes. Not because we are required, but because it reminds us of Jesus and what He has done for us.
Sabbath reminds us the thing we most need, Jesus has provided. Sabbath reminds us, Jesus is the one who has authority over our life. He knows what we most need. What we most need is Jesus.
The practice of giving intentional, dedicated time to God each week, reminds us, Jesus knows best what we need the most.
We are reminded of this when we remember communion.
