Pentecost 2 (5)
Notes
Transcript
Mark 2:23-28 (NIV)
23 One Sabbath Jesus was going through the grainfields, and as his disciples walked along, they began to pick some heads of grain. 24 The Pharisees said to him, "Look, why are they doing what is unlawful on the Sabbath?" 25 He answered, "Have you never read what David did when he and his companions were hungry and in need? 26 In the days of Abiathar the high priest, he entered the house of God and ate the consecrated bread, which is lawful only for priests to eat. And he also gave some to his companions." 27 Then he said to them, "The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath. 28 So the Son of Man is Lord even of the Sabbath."
Purpose of the Sabbath
Remember the biblical teaching of creation and how the Bible teaches that God rested on the seventh day.
Physical rest for those who worked hard manually throughout the week.
Spiritual rest for our souls through the message of the Gospel.
One of my favorite brick and mortar stores is Hobby Lobby. This craft store is filled with decorations for the interior of your home, seasonal decorations, and hobby items for visual arts, quilting, scrap booking, wood crafts, puzzles, model railroads and plastic models and supplies among others. It is filled with items you don’t really need but essential for crafters. It is not the only hobby/craft store chain but it is unique in that it is never open on Sundays. (Other craft stores are and on one Sunday morning the one I went to was full of customers.) Why is Hobby Lobby closed on Sundays? The sign on the door says so that its employees can spend time with family and in worship. Of course, employees don’t have to spend the day with their families or go to church but they don’t have to go to work on that day.
Why are your stores closed on Sundays? We have chosen to close on the day most widely recognized as a day of rest, in order to allow our employees and customers more time for worship and family. This has not been an easy decision for Hobby Lobby because we realize that this decision may cost us financially. 14, 2020 – Hobby Lobby Stores, Inc., today announced that it is raising its minimum full-time hourly wage to $17 effective October 1, 2020. ... In 2014, Hobby Lobby raised its full-time minimum hourly wage to $15 well before it became fashionable with other retailers.
You may also notice the Christian music played on the in store sound system and many items for sale which promote Christianity.
Hobby Lobby and Chic Filet are the two most known closed stores on Sundays. Jung’s Seed Company in Randolph boasts that its Randolph location is never, ever open on Sundays even though their outlets in Sun Prairie and Stevens Point are open. Historically, you may recall many places being closed on Sundays.
You may be too young to remember, but up until 40 or 50 years ago, nothing was open on Sunday. People went to church and observed Sunday as a day of rest. In Texas, we had the Blue Law. Grocery stores were open, but there were some things you couldn’t buy on Sunday. You could buy baby formula, but not diapers. You couldn’t buy alcohol and possibly not tobacco. Can’t remember for sure about that. So places like Hobby Lobby and Chick-Fil_A really are nothing new. Their owners are religious people and observe a day of rest for themselves and their employees on Sunday. Would that we could go back to the days when nothing was open on Sunday. Oh, I remember that at least some restaurants were open on Sunday.
The choice to be closed on Sunday is related to our Old Testament lesson for today. The Third Commandment made it mandatory that people rest on the Sabbath (which was a Saturday), by the way.
And the penalty for breaking it could be severe. Numbers 15:32–36 (NIV84)
32 While the Israelites were in the desert, a man was found gathering wood on the Sabbath day. 33 Those who found him gathering wood brought him to Moses and Aaron and the whole assembly, 34 and they kept him in custody, because it was not clear what should be done to him. 35 Then the LORD said to Moses, “The man must die. The whole assembly must stone him outside the camp.” 36 So the assembly took him outside the camp and stoned him to death, as the LORD commanded Moses.
In one of the longer narratives on this commandment, we hear from
15 In those days I saw men in Judah treading winepresses on the Sabbath and bringing in grain and loading it on donkeys, together with wine, grapes, figs and all other kinds of loads. And they were bringing all this into Jerusalem on the Sabbath. Therefore I warned them against selling food on that day. 16 Men from Tyre who lived in Jerusalem were bringing in fish and all kinds of merchandise and selling them in Jerusalem on the Sabbath to the people of Judah. 17 I rebuked the nobles of Judah and said to them, “What is this wicked thing you are doing—desecrating the Sabbath day? 18 Didn’t your forefathers do the same things, so that our God brought all this calamity upon us and upon this city? Now you are stirring up more wrath against Israel by desecrating the Sabbath.”
The purpose of this command was threefold:
Remember the biblical teaching of creation and how the Bible teaches that God rested on the seventh day.
Physical rest for those who worked hard manually throughout the week.
Spiritual rest for our souls through the message of the Gospel.
This commandment involves moral, civil, and ceremonial laws. Ceremonial laws were the stipulations that regulated their worship life. The Lord gave great details about sacrifices, the instructions concerning the Tent of Meeting and later the Temple, ceremonial cleanness, the timing of Festivals and days of worship. Unless you are a student of the Bible, most Christians would be hard pressed to cite all of those regulations. The one major carry over used to be considering one day (now Sunday) to be a day of rest and rules about what you could or could not do on Sunday. This is especially true among those with a Baptist or Reformed background. Lutherans and Catholics do not seem to have been so strict.
Growing up a Lutheran with a father who had become Lutheran but who had grown up in a strict Reformed home, we were mixed as to how much enforcement there was in our home as to regulations on Sunday.
We always went to church.
We did not go shopping.
We did not mow the lawn, bale hay, harvest fields, or clean pens on Sunday.
We did watch NFL football although I had cousins who were no allowed to do so.
We could go to movies, races, roll skating, bowling, etc.
For us it was a day of rest from the harder farm chores, a time to enjoy worshiping the Lord, and often we would visit or entertain our relatives.
But what if an emergency would arise that would involve doing things we normally didn’t do? Would we be conscience stricken and consider ourselves sinning if we broke our traditions? Or would be realize what Jesus taught in our text?
Jesus had grown up following the Sabbath Day regulations and we should assume teaching others to rest on the Sabbath as well. (Unless your righteousness . . . )
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. 18 I tell you the truth, until heaven and earth disappear, not the smallest letter, not the least stroke of a pen, will by any means disappear from the Law until everything is accomplished. 19 Anyone who breaks one of the least of these commandments and teaches others to do the same will be called least in the kingdom of heaven, but whoever practices and teaches these commands will be called great in the kingdom of heaven. 20 For I tell you that unless your righteousness surpasses that of the Pharisees and the teachers of the law, you will certainly not enter the kingdom of heaven.
But every once in a while he would be faced with either an emergency or a contingency which went beyond the letter of the law. This is one of them.
Explain the situation. “What is unlawful on the Sabbath?” Not taking from another person’s field. This was allowed. But working on the Sabbath. What work were they doing? In an effort to define exactly what this commandment meant, some teachers of the law became very precise as to what was considered work. How far you could walk. How much you could write. How much you could carry etc. That school of thought considered what the disciples to be doing to be threshing — unlawful in their eyes. We must note that it was not unlawful in God’s eyes but that they had created their own ritual laws which Jesus later addressed. Mark 7:5–8 (NIV84)
5 So the Pharisees and teachers of the law asked Jesus, “Why don’t your disciples live according to the tradition of the elders instead of eating their food with ‘unclean’ hands?” 6 He replied, “Isaiah was right when he prophesied about you hypocrites; as it is written: “ ‘These people honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me. 7 They worship me in vain; their teachings are but rules taught by men.’ 8 You have let go of the commands of God and are holding on to the traditions of men.”
Jesus defends the actions of his disciples with an example from the Old Testament (David and his mean eating the consecrated bread) and his statement: “The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath.” What does this mean?
Mark The Disciples Pick Wheat on the Sabbath / 2:23–28 / 45
2:27 And He said to them, “The Sabbath was made for man, and not man for the Sabbath.” The Pharisees, having added all kinds of restrictions for the Sabbath, had completely forgotten God’s purpose in creating the Sabbath. God mercifully provided the Sabbath as a day of rest for his people—a day to set aside the normal duties of the workweek and spend time resting and worshiping (Genesis 2:1–3). But the Pharisees had only succeeded in making the Sabbath an impossible burden. While the Ten Commandments do prohibit work on the Sabbath (Exodus 20:8–11), “work” can be construed in many ways. One person’s “work” is another person’s leisure. Some work is necessary for worship; for example, the priests were allowed to work by performing sacrifices and conducting worship services. This “work” was serving and worshiping God. The prohibition of work is the letter of the law. Jesus always emphasized the intent of the law, the meaning behind the letter. The Pharisees had lost the spirit of the law and were rigidly demanding that the letter (and their interpretation of it) be obeyed. Jesus made clear that the Sabbath was created for people by their merciful God, providing them a day of rest. God did not create people in order to place impossible restrictions and burdens on their lives.
Specific sin: The problem I see today isn’t that people are too strict when it comes to Sunday activities, it is that they are too lax. The “god” of sports and leisure has so infiltrated peoples lives that they don’t give a second thought to consistently despising the means of grace for these pursuits. And no one is immune. You have probably heard the joke about the man of the cloth who skipped leading worship and lied that he was sick so he could get in a round of gold. Jesus grants him a hole in one to punish him to which Peter objects. “Who is he going to tell?” is Jesus’ response.
Although it is convenient to have businesses open on Sunday and many children’s sports programs run outside of school choose Sunday mornings because it is the only time slot not used up by school athletic programs, how necessary are they and they do impose on worship.
We would do better to look at this event in Mark as an exception to the rule rather than a precedent encouraging us to satisfy ourselves at the expense of using the opportunities we have on Sunday to find rest for our souls. We do not want to go the the extreme of the Pharisees and legislating what can or cannot be done on Sunday and judging the actions of others. On the other hand, we do not want to disregard the opportunities we have from God to find rest for our souls and to encourage one another to do the same.