LORD OF THE SABBATH

LORD OF THE SABBATH Matthew 12:1-14 With grateful acknowledgement of these sources of direction and inspiration: the Holy Spirit; the Word of God; Geo. Beasley-Murray, Jesus and the Kingdom of God; Rich Bersett, The Sabbath Rhythm (message preached 10/11/98); Alfred Edersheim, The Life and Times of Jesus the Messiah; Michael Green, Matthew for Today; John MacArthur, Matthew 8-15 February 13, 2005 Given by: Pastor Rich Bersett [Index of Past Messages] Introduction Show DVD of Matthew 12:1-14 as dramatized scripture reading. Have you ever heard of the “Blue Laws”? They were laws, written mostly in the late eighteenth century, that had to do with remembering the Sabbath. They were called the blue laws because they were written originally on blue paper, and they were specific to the issues surrounding keeping the Sabbath. It’s almost inconceivable that there ever was a government law espousing a biblical ideal. Today in our secular pluralistic society you can’t get away with creating laws that have to do with religious notions (unless your religion happens to be secular humanism). The blue laws restricted work-related and other behaviors on the Sabbath, which was popularly interpreted as Sunday. Unless you had a job directly related to the public safety you couldn’t work on Sunday. You couldn’t open your retail store on Sunday, because you tempted people to shop on the day of rest. If you were a restaurant owner you were forced to close on Sunday because you couldn’t work your employees on their Sabbath. So everyone had to stay home for their Sunday meals (Oh, my! What would we do?!) Some in this room this morning remember the days when it was scandalous to open your store or restaurant on Sunday, and equally as scandalous to shop or eat at such an institution. I’m sure you’ve seen the ads on television or on the billboards for St. Louis’ Goedeker Super Stores declaring that they are closed on Sunday “so our employees can attend worship.” There is another remnant of the blue laws still around today—in many counties you cannot buy alcoholic beverages after a certain hour on Saturday or at any time on Sunday. People in those areas who love their alcohol think they’re called blue laws because if you can’t drink you’re “blue.” Of course, how many of the Goedeker employees do attend worship, and the booze hounds just stock up before Saturday night and get just as drunk on the Sabbath as any other day of the week. Human Nature and Laws That’s the way with laws and human nature, isn’t it? We establish well- intentioned laws and then we sabotage them in any way we can. We pass a law creating a maximum speed of 65 mph on our highways, and what’s the first question every driver asks? How many mph over the limit can I go before I get a ticket? It’s just human nature to want to hyper-legalize laws, push the envelope, test the fences. That rebellious streak in us explains why we drive 69 mph and buy fuzzbusters. The religious leaders in the time of Jesus’ earthly ministry saw themselves as the keepers of the law, and they rightly were just that. Now wherever you have a law you will have hyper-legalizers. Once you interpret the Sabbath law as meaning you could not travel more than 3,000 feet on Sabbath. Questions: 3,000 feet from where? From your home. What if your food was more than 3000 feet from your home? OK, you can go farther in order to eat. How much farther? Um, another 3,000 feet. We can’t work on Sabbath, huh? So what is work? Can I lift anything, move my furniture, light my candles? Under the many regulations set up by the traditions, you could not carry a load heavier than a fig, but if your burden weighed half that weight, you could carry it twice as far. Cleaning the house was out of the question—that was work. So you could not take a bath, because water might spill onto the floor and that would be “washing” the floor. Women were not allowed to look in a mirror on Sabbath because she might see a gray hair and be tempted to pull it, which, of course, would be work. You could not throw an object into the air with one hand and catch it with the other. If you were reaching for some food and after you picked it up it suddenly turned 6:00 on Friday and Sabbath began, you were prohibited from pulling the food back to you to eat, because you would be guilty of carrying a load, thereby breaking the Sabbath. So you had to drop the food, then pull your hand back toward you. Human beings tend to go from the sublime to the ridiculous when it comes to laws. We have an insatiable need to legalize just how far we can go, and we can’t keep ourselves from looking for loopholes. In the case of traveling on the Sabbath, some inventive people tied a rope from house to another building across an alley, because according to another obscure rule, that building became an extension of their home temporarily. So they were allowed to go across the alley, to the far end of that property and then another 3,000 ft. I can picture it now, early Saturday afternoon, people all over Jerusalem running clothesline from their house through the streets to their friends’ houses. In just one section of the Talmud, there are 24 chapters full of regulations about the Sabbath. Among those thousands of rules were stipulations against sewing, baking, shearing, tying & untying knots, when it was legal to bandage a wound and when it wasn’t (only enough to keep the patient alive until after Sabbath). And there were specific regulations about picking grain to eat on the Sabbath. You could do that only if you were starving. Of course, there evolved a whole litany of religious debates defining when a person was or was not starving. Here’s the problem with such traditions: it doesn’t take you long specifying the particular applications of the law before the whole intent of the law is buried under a mountain of minutiae and a tangle of red tape. Question: what was the original intent of the Sabbath? According to the Old Testament scriptures that were read earlier by Allison, the Sabbath was given as a gift of rest to man. That is, when people get so caught up in the busyness and economics of life that they work too hard and too long without rest to their own harm, God steps in with this panacea.  The Sabbath was a helpful, preventive grace-gift to human beings to keep them from killing themselves in the pursuit of less important things, and to give them a shot at healthy living which always includes regular rest from labors. Jesus taught elsewhere, Man was not made for the benefit of the Sabbath—the Sabbath was made for the benefit of man! (paraphrase of Mark 2:27) Jesus’ Correction of Sabbath-keeping Distortions There are really two Sabbath-keeping issues in our text today. One has to do with the disciples’ eating grain from the fields on the Sabbath, and the other with Jesus healing the shriveled hand of a man on the Sabbath. I want you to notice the way Jesus answers the Pharisees’ charges leveled at Him and His disciples, and how He simultaneously corrects their distortions of Sabbath Law. He uses three corrective tactics: careful interpretation of scripture, His own credentials as Lord of the Sabbath, and a strong emphasis on compassion. When Jesus and the others are walking through the grain fields they realized they were hungry and they pulled off some heads of grain, rubbed off the husk and the chaff, and ate the grain. The Pharisees saw it and accused them of unlawful behavior on the Sabbath. (The question might be asked what the Pharisees were doing in the grain fields on the Sabbath themselves—had they walked more than 3,000 feet, and why were they stalking Jesus and his men?) Drawing from the examples of David and the priests, Jesus gives the proper interpretation of the law. One, don’t get so hung up on the details, guys—the priests of God didn’t and neither did the man after God’s own heart! Two, speaking of being after God’s own heart, you really should understand the heart of the Law, which is mercy, not sacrifice. In verse 7 Jesus quotes from the prophet Hosea (6:6) The most important thing a teacher of the scripture needs is an accurate understanding of the big picture of God’s revelation. The International Standard Version translates 2 Timothy 2:15 well when it teaches that the disciple of Christ should [handle] the word of truth with precision. That does not mean “nit-picking”—in fact, it means almost just the opposite. Disciples should make it their aim to know scripture in its entirety so they will be capable of understanding the smaller sections in light of the entire revelation. Having a few favorite hobby-horse passages memorized, but relative ignorance of the rest of the Word, does not make you a qualified teacher. You are in danger of terrible misinterpretation of God’s Word. We must see the forest and the trees. The Pharisees were prostituters of truth when they focused on minute details; they were treacherous teachers when they made the law burdensome to people and they were ignorant fools when they would not receive correction from the Lord. Don’t be any of these things. But Jesus didn’t stop there. Not only does a right and proper understanding of the scripture render the correct interpretation of the Law of God, He says, but He adds, and by the way—I am the Lord of the Sabbath—I made it and I can tell you how best to keep it, so instead of condemning me and my companions, open your eyes and your hearts and maybe you’ll learn something. Basically, if you want to know how something is to work, go to the manufacturer. Who will you call for help if your computer crashes? The company that made it and their very helpful staff of expensive support techs holed up somewhere in Pakistan answering your call. Jesus insists, if you want to know about Sabbath, get as far away from your traditions as you can and call on the Lord of the Sabbath for the right answers. Jesus declared His identity in no uncertain terms. In verse 6 He said, "I tell you that one [or something] greater than the temple is here" and then in verse 8 He said, "For the Son of Man is Lord of the Sabbath." Everyone who heard Him knew exactly what He was saying. He was God incarnate, maker of heaven and earth and the Sabbath!  Naturally, Jesus’ assertion that He was God would not set well with the Pharisees, although they seemed to show remarkable restraint for the moment. They bit their tongues all day that Sabbath, but that night verse 14 tells us they "went out and plotted how they might kill Jesus." They didn’t take kindly to claims to divinity. The third argument Jesus brings is the argument of compassion. This is best illustrated in the occasion of healing the man with the withered hand on the Sabbath. Did you notice the observation in verse 10— "Looking for a reason to accuse Jesus, they asked him, “Is it lawful to heal on the Sabbath?” They loved to debate the Sabbath topic. Do you know why? Because they were experts in it. They spent day after day, hour after grueling hour poring over the thousands of pages of material in the Talmud and Midrash that had to do with this detail or that question and this Rabbi’s interpretation versus that Scribe’s interpretation. Did you ever notice that some people seem addicted to arguing and debating over some particular doctrine or portion of scripture? Of course, they have spent considerable time making themselves experts in some trivia or speculative interpretation. Now they want to get you in a corner and monopolize your time. They usually have two objectives: one, to impress you with how wise they are and how many of their pet verses they can quote from memory, and two, to get you into a debate over some particular where you don’t agree. Wise disciples don’t major in minors, but, while they do study the scripture earnestly, their objective is to know God better and live out the principles that are important to God. Things like mercy and grace, love and ministry, evangelism and service. These are the kind of people who don’t seek after knowledge for how smart it makes them feel, but seek after God with all their hearts. And you will recognize them by their fruits. If they’re argumentative and nit-picky and negative they are more like Pharisees than disciples. Jesus saw far more kingdom value in ministering healing to the man with the shriveled hand and He did in engaging in theological pugilism with the Pharisees. While they were looking for a reason to accuse Jesus, Jesus was looking for a way to heal the hurting. Which camp do you usually find yourself in?  Once again, Jesus draws on His comprehension of God’s real purposes in the scripture as He confronts the Pharisees’ logic. Somewhere buried in the traditions was an exception, a loophole, that permitted a person to pull his sheep out of a pit if it should happen to fall in on a Sabbath. That, it was argued, was an economic necessity. After all, if the sheep foundered or broke a leg while trapped in a hole, it would be of no value to its owner. Jesus chose His example wisely, knowing that using the sheep analogy would force them to admit that even the traditions allow for helping on the Sabbath. Then Jesus wins the judge and jury with His statement in verse 12, [Now} "how much more valuable is a man than a sheep? Therefore it is lawful to do good on the Sabbath" Then He ministered healing to the man in question. In this miracle, then, he demonstrates that God’s mercy and compassion win out over any concern about doing good on which appropriate day. Here’s how Jesus sees it: Do good in the name of God whenever opportunity presents itself to you, trusting in the leading of the Holy Spirit in your life. Then get your Sabbath rest when you can. What About the Sabbath? Was Jesus flouting the fourth commandment of Yahweh that came down from Sinai? Was He mocking the importance of this law so prevalent in the scriptures? The quick answer is No. He was not being disrespectful of the Law. He was doing exactly what He did in the Sermon on the Mount and that is to clarify the true purpose of the law and apply godly wisdom to its application. The Sabbath was commanded, you’ll remember, as a help to us, not a hindrance. And because mankind is so good at forgetting God’s suggestions, He made it a commandment, setting aside one day a week, originally Friday, 6 pm through Saturday, 6 pm, as a day of rest and worship. With the resurrection of Jesus on the first day of the week and the fulfillment of the Law in His death and resurrection, the church began to see the Sabbath as no longer on Saturday, but on Sunday. Without going into a drawn out explanation, that is why Christian historically have seen Sunday as our Sabbath replacement. For most of the history of the church this new Sabbath was a day dedicated to God, to remembering Who it is Who is our source of life and happiness. Jesus is Lord of the Sabbath and the target of our love and service. But, isn’t every day a day that we should devote to the Lord. Why just Sunday? Besides, that’s my day to golf, to sleep in, to wash the car, to mow the lawn, to go fishing, to go boating, to go skiing, to go shopping. Why shouldn’t I just do all this in Jesus’ name? Let me answer with a question. Every dollar the Christian earns belongs to the Lord, right? Now, would you rather give Him an offering of 100% or His divine recommendation of 10%? That’s what I thought. We just need some kind of structure. Can a Christian make his personal Sabbath on a different day? Like, if his days off are Thursday and Friday, can one of those days be his Sabbath? Sure. But the other believers usually are meeting for corporate worship on Sunday, or Saturday night. Sometimes a person needs to get creative. Pastors do. They always work on Sunday! Does that make me a Sabbath-breaker? I should, and do make time for relaxation and special devotion to the Lord on another day. Principles for Christian Sabbath-keeping Let me suggest a couple of principles concerning Sabbath-keeping for believers.  1. Dedicate a seventh of your time to shabat – a time of rest and devotion to the Lord. Make it a time for avoiding labor and a time for meditating on the Lord. To be preferred is an entire day. If not maybe two half-days per week. But I can’t—I’m too busy! That is exactly the point. That’s same reasoning as saying I can’t give an offering to the Lord—I don’t have anything left! That’s precisely why we need some structure—to help us dedicate ourselves to God first. 2. Honor the rhythm of the Sabbath. Genesis says the Lord rested on the seventh day. Thereafter, the Bible makes it clear that was to be an example for us. There is something to be said for making your Sabbath weekly. We need regular rest, just like we need sleep after 15-16 hours of wakefulness, so we need one day of rest after six days of labor. The rhythm is an important feature of Sabbath. We need not only the rest of Sabbath, but also the time to reflect on the goodness and grace of God. We need the time with other believers—that “holy happy hour” that carries us through the ensuing week. 3. Celebrate Sabbath. If you see the practice of Sabbath rest and worship as a duty, something is wrong. If taking time out of your busyness or your work really bothers you, then you are just the kind of person who needs Sabbath in the worst way. I encourage you to seek the Lord’s will in this matter, get some good counsel from Christians you love and respect, and learn anew the art of celebrating Sabbath. Again, it is not so much law as it is privilege. That’s why we don’t call it our weekly compunction, but our weekly celebration. 4. Exercise Sabbath faith. Taking Sabbath rest is a way of showing our confidence in God’s work, and trusting His faithfulness. It takes a good dose of faith to believe, really believe, that something good will happen if we stop doing for awhile; if we just trust God Who tells us to rest and it will be okay. I remember a day a while ago when Charlotte and I were busy, too busy, getting a lot of things done that just had to be done. Everything we faced seemed to have deadlines and we were uptight and getting snippy with each other. In fact we were getting mean and cantankerous with each other. We looked at each other out of our feelings of hurt and repentance and just agreed, “It’s time for a break—to step awaaayyy from the work! We made arrangements for child care (since Joni was one of the current stressors) and off we went to Borders Bookstore.  We had some coffee, read through a couple of magazines, talked and settled down. We caught our breath, talked for a few minutes about getting our priorities back. We rehearsed how our lives, our ministries and our marriage were dedicated to the Lord, and how we had made it so much our own. Mental and emotional health was restored, and a new perspective was gained. In the flesh, it made no sense to walk away for those two-three hours. There was a lot to be done in a short time, and it would be downright irresponsible to walk away right then. But we believed it was right in the Lord, we obeyed the prompting of the Spirit, and we did it. And it worked. When we got home, all was well with Joni, we sailed through the assignments we had almost effortlessly. And we sat down to relax again with time to spare, shaking our heads at how caught up in the ferment of fretfulness we had allowed ourselves to get.  Life has a way of getting us all pent up, and taking a break often seems like the last things we need to do. But God knows better. In His wisdom, He set up a rhythm of shabat. It was the Lord, you remember, who gave manna to His people in the wilderness, and He did it in just the manner He wanted. He sent the miracle manna every day, just enough to be gathered for the day. But He didn’t send any on the Sabbath. Rather He sent enough the day before to be gathered for both days, and on the Sabbath day they rested and thanked God for His faithfulness. The Sabbath is our cue to gain a fresh vision of God. This will help us to step outside our frantic-paced society to be with God  5. Prepare wisely for Sabbath. One final exhortation—we should learn to prepare wisely for Sabbath—or else it will never happen. I know that some of you are saying to yourself, Well, if Sabbath is supposed to be so restful, why are Sundays so stressful? Put God first, and do it first. The time to get the kind of refreshing rest God wants you to have is not after everything else is done—it never gets done. Plan to do this for God—He wants to do it for you. Write it in your Daytimer if you have to, but plan your Sabbath. I also suggest that you use sanity in your commitments and scheduling. The big reason we are tempted to take Sabbath time for ourselves and for God is because we have painted ourselves into a corner with things we promised to do. Do this one thing for God once a week and do it for yourself—schedule in nothing but a pleasant and relaxed time with Him—in worship with the rest of your church family, then later with your own family, or by yourself. Here’s another practical idea. Don’t ruin your Sabbath experience by jamming up your morning. A lot of you come bustling in to Celebration at the last minute, some of you are even regularly late. That can’t help you in your effort to honor the Lord with your worship or to enjoy your time of fellowship and ministry among your brothers and sisters.  Some of you stay up so late with other activities on Saturday nights that you sabotage your Sabbath experience. Parents—a suggestion: Saturday night is probably not the best night for a sleep-over. The kids are not rested because they giggled and had pillow fights until the wee hours. They will not be alert for Kid City Bible lessons. They are probably crabby, robbing you of your enjoyment of the Celebration experience. We often cheat ourselves out of God’s best for us simply because we haven’t wisely prepared. Get up early enough to get around without all the stress. Leave in plenty of time to arrive early, so you can get in some visiting, or just spend a few minutes in meditation and preparation for worship, or maybe to get your children’s class materials ready. You know the greatest experiences in life are those we plan for. We will spend weeks planning a weekend vacation, but we hardly ever spend even an hour preparing for the most important day of the week. Ask the Lord to help you dedicate yourself to His Sabbath, to get into the rhythm of Sabbath, to celebrate Sabbath, to trust that God will honor His promise and grant you that rest, and to prepare wisely for your Sabbaths. I close with a quote from Exodus 20: "Remember the Sabbath day by keeping it holy." (Exodus 20:8) [Back to Top]