Ruthless Elimination of Hurry: Sabbath

Introduction and scripture

Mark 2:23–28 NIV

One Sabbath Jesus was going through the grainfields, and as his disciples walked along, they began to pick some heads of grain. The Pharisees said to him, “Look, why are they doing what is unlawful on the Sabbath?” He answered, “Have you never read what David did when he and his companions were hungry and in need? 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.” Then he said to them, “The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath. So the Son of Man is Lord even of the Sabbath.”

Pray.

have you every experienced burn out? I am not talking about just needing a vacation, but just so done that you are a shell of yourself...

Kingwood, set the scene.

What is the Sabbath?

Immediately we are at a disadvantage when it comes to sabbath. Our western and modern formation has all but eliminated it from existence. And for many of us if we know what it is we kind of roll our eyes at it.

The context of our passage from Mark requires a little work for us to grasp what Jesus is doing here.

To go to the beginning of Sabbath, we would go all the way back to the very beginning:

Genesis 2:2–3 NIV

By the seventh day God had finished the work he had been doing; so on the seventh day he rested from all his work. Then God blessed the seventh day and made it holy, because on it he rested from all the work of creating that he had done.

God sabbaths and institutes the sabbath as a part of who he is. He stops and delights in creation. Side note here…if you want to write this thing off, God rested. You probably need to.

The Sabbath is Holy and Blessed

He blesses three things in Genesis 1-2, blesses the animals to be fruitful and multiply and the humans to be fruitful and multiply and then he blesses a day.

Why? Because it is life giving in the world.

Holy: This means set a part and a place that God resides. Think about that. God resides in a specific day. Other religions, even Jerusalem, had these shrine locations or holy temples, places you could travel to to encounter God....this is in a day. A day to encounter God. This should challenge us. Are you feeling distant from God? Have you skipped on a place that He has promised to be?

Ok well it does not take long for God to see that human nature is to miss out on what this is supposed to be, so God commands it.

Exodus 20:9–11 NIV

Six days you shall labor and do all your work, but the seventh day is a sabbath to the Lord your God. On it you shall not do any work, neither you, nor your son or daughter, nor your male or female servant, nor your animals, nor any foreigner residing in your towns. For in six days the Lord made the heavens and the earth, the sea, and all that is in them, but he rested on the seventh day. Therefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy.

This is the longest of the 10 commandments. It calls on Jews to abstain from every kind of work. This is the one of the 10 commandments rooted in creation. It is one of the signs of Israel among the nations. The other being circumscision. This is the eternal one,.....from all time.

Now fast-forward and the sabbath takes on a life of its own in religious practice. The dead seas scrolls expand definitions of “working” to things like carrying children, or helping an animal to give birth, or saving an animal that could be in harms way.

Sometimes this got so extreme that some pharisees and religion teachers taught it was unlawful to set a dislocated bone or repair a fallen roof.

The rabbis and religious teachers would offer case by case rulings on situations.

My favorite: If a building fell on people, you could remove enough to see people were alive and rescue them, but you could not remove the dead until after the sabbath.

So in this light, the Pharisees catch up to Jesus as he is seemingly breaking one of these rules:

Jesus is breaking rules again....

As Jesus and the disciples are travelling through the granefields, they grab heads of grain to eat. And these pharisees are following them around questioning everything. This is happening all throughout Mark and especially in this section of the book. Eating with sinners, fasting wrong, and now messing up the sabbath. And this is an escalation in that order. In the next chapter he will heal on the sabbath and they will want to kill him for it.

But the reason we are focusing on these verses is because I want you to see how Jesus responds to it.

The Pharisees have allowed the method to be more important than the reason. How you do Sabbath is more important than what the Sabbath’s intentions were for.

So for some of us…I will suggest some ways to do Sabbath, but do not sit with paralysis of method and miss the reason.

Even some of us do not practice sabbath because we think the method is out of touch. We are not unlike these Pharisees. Both the pharisee and the modern day critic deny the sabbath because they are worried about method, just different sides of the coin.

Then Jesus gives them a precedence from their own faith background for the ridiculousness of their views:

David and is on the run from Saul and he brings his crew into the temple and eats the hawaiian bread off the altar. Ok, my interpretation. But the bread that is set aside for their holy practice and the consumption of the high priest. There is a lot going on here…Jesus is compared several times in Mark’s gospel to David as this new king. That is another sermon. But practically, can you imagine if David and his men, on the run for their lives and starving, got to this point and says....oh dang. Do not eat this.

Then Jesus drives the point home: The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath

Mark 2:27 NIV

Then he said to them, “The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath.

The sabbath was made for us. What does this mean? Well it means it is a blessing that brings life. Sabbath is not a religious burden like something else we are supposed to do.

Dan Allendar on his book on the sabbath.

“The Sabbath is an invitation to enter delight. The Sabbath, when experienced as God intended, is best day of our lives. Without question or thought, it is the best day of the week. It is the day we anticipate on Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday— and the day we remember on Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday. Sabbath is the holy time where we feast, play, dance, have sex, sing, pray, laugh, tell stories, read, paint, walk, and watch creation in its fullness. Few people are willing to enter the Sabbath and sanctify it, to make it holy, because a full day of delight and joy is more than most people can bear in a lifetime, let alone a week.”

What are the implications of this statement? “It was made for us...”

to ignore sabbath is not just breaking a commandment, it is ignoring a rhythm created to bless you. If this was just about commandment then it would only be about crossing a boundary, but this goes back to Genesis and the design God had for us.

to ignore the sabbath is to disregard protection God has for you. Desire, Thomas A.

What is Sabbath and How do I do it?

Let me give you just a couple things here. Not about a certain day of the week.

Sabbath is:

The Sabbath is a time of rest and worship

Look again at Exodus...

Exodus 20:8–11 NIV

“Remember the Sabbath day by keeping it holy. Six days you shall labor and do all your work, but the seventh day is a sabbath to the Lord your God. On it you shall not do any work, neither you, nor your son or daughter, nor your male or female servant, nor your animals, nor any foreigner residing in your towns. For in six days the Lord made the heavens and the earth, the sea, and all that is in them, but he rested on the seventh day. Therefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy.

First word here, remember. This is a time to remember all that God has done. The ways he provides and guides. The way he brought life. To remember what he is doing in your life.

Last line says the Sabbath is to the Lord.

This is a time of rest and worship. Do not work, and love God.

Can you run everything you do on Sabbath through this filter:

is this rest?

does this lead to gratitude and love for God?

It means something different for all of you. For some of you it might be a glass of wine with dear friends. For others it might mean fajitas on the patio. Or smoking a brisket. Oh sorry…those are mine. Hiking.

2. The Sabbath is resistance

For me, this may be the most important for our time. Comer shows a helpful nuance we get from the OT here…in Deuteronomy Moses has to remember a future generation of the commandments. The words are almost the same except instead of tying it back to creation. He ties it to something else from their near history.

Deut 5:15

Deuteronomy 5:15 NIV

Remember that you were slaves in Egypt and that the Lord your God brought you out of there with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm. Therefore the Lord your God has commanded you to observe the Sabbath day.

He reminds them of an empire that consumed people because it lusted for more. Egypt built store cities to keep all their extra stuff. And it was all built on the backs of the oppressed. Slaves do not get a day off, they work day in and day out.

This can be us in a blink of an eye, except Egypt is a lot of times our own choosing.

We are simultaneously Egypt lusting for more and the slaves trying to build it.

Sabbath is a resistance to both lust and bondage.

so put the phones away

get outside. dont go shopping

resist being an aimless consumer

spend time with your loved ones.

Closing

You know what should be enough for us?

God rested--you should too.

But I have been doing this long enough that I know God said it, Jesus did it, you should too.... does not quite do it for us anymore.

But what if you are missing God because you are missing the part of the week that he promised to fill?

What if the sabbath was created for you?

Matthew 11:28-30 ““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.””

One thing that is always on my mind leading this church...

I desperately want you to become more aware of God

So at different times we will talk about this in different ways:

the necessity of close community. People that know you.

the necessity of hanging out where God does....with the sick, hurting, lost

and third, the necessity of positioning ourselves in God’s grace. Through rhythmns and practices.