The Holy Sabbath

Introduction

We are on the 12th chapter of Matthew’s Gospel account, which captures the rising tension between Jesus and the judaic religious rulers of that time, namely the Pharisees and Scribes.

And last week, we saw why we must be careful not to be like these obnoxious rulers who did not understand God’s law, and yet lorded it over the people. They took only the content of Scripture, never pursuing to understand God’s intent.

So, in this chapter we see a series of confrontations that arise from such false piety. And the first of those, as we saw last week, is the law regarding the holy sabbath. Now, I spent much of last week pointing out the false theological presumptions that stumbled the pharisees so that we can take an objective look at the doctrine of the Sabbath today.

And in order to do that, I want to start with a few things that I mentioned in my last sermon. I want to lay a good foundation that will help us understand our text for today. So, here are three observations,

All laws are not equal. There are greater laws and lesser laws. One of the ways to know a greater law from a lesser law is based on the degree of the penalty involved. But the better way is to distinguish the moral weight of that law, or the weight of what the law symbolises [lying vs murder]

The reason therefore why we tend to flatten laws out, or unduly elevate one law over others, is to cover up our sin. We elevate the laws that are easy to keep in order to obscure the ones that are really hard to keep. [Sabbath]

[Adultery of the heart, and hatred akin to murder]

We can broadly classify all of the OT laws under three categories - moral, ceremonial & civic laws

Christians in general agree that Jesus fulfilled once and for all, all the levitical requirements of the law. For all the rituals in the OT were a shadow, a symbol pointing to the Christ.

Therefore, we don’t follow them today.

Now Christians have a lot of disagreement however on what else in the law has and has not ceased. We know that the moral laws continue since Jesus clearly restates them in the New Testament.

As we wrestle with the question of God’s OT law and how it relates to the NT, let me remind you of what Jesus said in,

Matthew 5:17–18 ESV

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 For truly, I say to you, until heaven and earth pass away, not an iota, not a dot, will pass from the Law until all is accomplished.

Jesus did not abolish. He fulfilled. The language of Scripture is not that Jesus came and broke His Father’s law, but that He kept it. In fact, He fulfilled much of it, bringing them to a closure, like an end to their tenure.

This brings me to my third observation. When I refer to the content and intent of the Law, I’m saying that there is a principle behind every law.

Now, symbolic and ritual laws may be fulfilled in Christ, but the principles that they symbolised my still remain. That is why the words not abolish, and fulfil become crucial. For if Christ abolished a law, we’d have to put away with its principles.

When the Pharisees kept the law outwardly and yet broke its principle in their legalism, they were just as law breaking as those who reject the law entirely. This is the danger of legalism even in our time. We can press for a certain law keeping in such a way that we forego the very principle that law was meant to upkeep.

Therefore, even when we look at fulfilled laws, we must be aware of the principles it upheld because the New Testament is not an abolishing or a replacement of the Old, but a fulfillment and a realisation of the OT. The new wineskins are still wineskins, not buckets.

In Romans 11, Paul talks about Israel as the olive tree, and how Gentiles in the NT are branches grafted in, and the Jews that resisted the Messaiah are branches that were removed. But the olive tree remains.

The NT is an expansion of the OT, not a replacement, and the laws that have ceased have been completed or realised by Jesus. They were fulfilled and not abolished or simply cast aside.

Romans 8:3–4 ESV

3 For God has done what the law, weakened by the flesh, could not do. By sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin, he condemned sin in the flesh, 4 in order that the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not according to the flesh but according to the Spirit.

The righteous requirement of the law!

So, what do we do? Do we let our children watch or not watch movies on Sunday? What is forbidden and what is encouraged? Why do we have church services on Sunday? Does the Sabbath law apply to us today?

That is the question this sermon will try to address. As a church, we’ve often waited for God to teach us these things through the expository preaching of His word. Redemption Hill does not have an official position on the Sabbath, and this sermon will, I hope, serve as a means to bring that about.

Sabbath Survey

Now the Sabbath law is a subject of great debate among theologians. There are hardcore sabbatarians, who are people who hold to an extremely strict view on the Sabbath because they believe that the observance of the Sabbath as being holy, is expected to continue to this day.

Then there are the more liberal Sabbatarians, followed by those who feel that the Sabbath observance has entirely ceased.

Now, the first ever occurence of Sabbath keeping is seen in Exodus 16, which is a remarkable thing. Nowhere between creation and Israel’s journey through the wilderness, do we see men keeping the Sabbath.

What about Genesis where God created the world in six days, and rested on the seventh?

Genesis 2:1–3 ESV

1 Thus the heavens and the earth were finished, and all the host of them. 2 And on the seventh day God finished his work that he had done, and he rested on the seventh day from all his work that he had done. 3 So God blessed the seventh day and made it holy, because on it God rested from all his work that he had done in creation.

Now, one could argue that this is the beginning of the Sabbath and they may be right, but we do not see the observence of the Sabbath being commanded till Exodus 16.

So, what does it mean when we say that God rested? God is not one to tire. He doesn’t need to revitalise His strength. He’s God. Then why did He rest? Well the word there for rest specifically emphasises a ceasing from work. God like a master builder, creates a beautiful world in six days, and on the seventh day, having completed His creation, rests over it. He delights over His creation.

It could also be argued that God created the earth as a sanctuary where He intends to rest His presence on.

[New heavens and new earth]

Let us turn now to Exodus 16,

Exodus 16:22–30 ESV

22 On the sixth day they gathered twice as much bread, two omers each. And when all the leaders of the congregation came and told Moses, 23 he said to them, “This is what the Lord has commanded: ‘Tomorrow is a day of solemn rest, a holy Sabbath to the Lord; bake what you will bake and boil what you will boil, and all that is left over lay aside to be kept till the morning.’ ” 24 So they laid it aside till the morning, as Moses commanded them, and it did not stink, and there were no worms in it. 25 Moses said, “Eat it today, for today is a Sabbath to the Lord; today you will not find it in the field. 26 Six days you shall gather it, but on the seventh day, which is a Sabbath, there will be none.” 27 On the seventh day some of the people went out to gather, but they found none. 28 And the Lord said to Moses, “How long will you refuse to keep my commandments and my laws? 29 See! The Lord has given you the Sabbath; therefore on the sixth day he gives you bread for two days. Remain each of you in his place; let no one go out of his place on the seventh day.” 30 So the people rested on the seventh day.

This isn’t yet the institution of the Sabbath law, but this is clearly the first time when God began to use the Sabbath symbol. What is the moral significance of Sabbath keeping here? None. God seems to be using the Sabbath as a symbol.

Now, let’s move down to Exodus 20 when God gives His decalogue, the 10 commandments,

Here is the fourth commandment in that list,

Exodus 20:8–11 ESV

8 “Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy. 9 Six days you shall labor, and do all your work, 10 but the seventh day is a Sabbath to the Lord your God. On it you shall not do any work, you, or your son, or your daughter, your male servant, or your female servant, or your livestock, or the sojourner who is within your gates. 11 For in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them, and rested on the seventh day. Therefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy.

The word ‘holy’ as all of you at Redemption Hill knows by now, means to be separate. We often tend to thinkof being ‘holy’ as being ‘pure’. Now, that’s not wrong. In the right context holiness might be directly referring to purity. But holiness isn’t just purity. It is being separated out. Purity is part of the purpose of being separated out.

So holiness here doesn’t mean that the Sabbath was more pure than the other days. All the days of God’s creations are pure. Rather, the seventh day was different, separated out from the other six as a special day, a day with a blessing of rest.

It was set apart as a holy day, and that is the word from which we get our modern day ‘holiday’. [Examples]

Therefore, now the law of God has been instituted by Moses, that remembers to keep the Sabbath holy, in remembrance of God’s creation.

Now, the second thing that such observance does is that it reminds God’s people of what they abandoned in Adam’s fall. For Adam, every day was restful. The work of Eden was a delight. It was paradise. But when Adam fell,

in Genesis 3:17-19

Genesis 3:17–19 ESV

17 And to Adam he said, “Because you have listened to the voice of your wife and have eaten of the tree of which I commanded you, ‘You shall not eat of it,’ cursed is the ground because of you; in pain you shall eat of it all the days of your life; 18 thorns and thistles it shall bring forth for you; and you shall eat the plants of the field. 19 By the sweat of your face you shall eat bread, till you return to the ground, for out of it you were taken; for you are dust, and to dust you shall return.”

The Sabbath is a remembrance of man’s abandon of paradise.

A few chapters laters we read more about the Sabbath observance, to Moses.

Exodus 31:12–17 ESV

12 And the Lord said to Moses, 13 “You are to speak to the people of Israel and say, ‘Above all you shall keep my Sabbaths, for this is a sign between me and you throughout your generations, that you may know that I, the Lord, sanctify you. 14 You shall keep the Sabbath, because it is holy for you. Everyone who profanes it shall be put to death. Whoever does any work on it, that soul shall be cut off from among his people. 15 Six days shall work be done, but the seventh day is a Sabbath of solemn rest, holy to the Lord. Whoever does any work on the Sabbath day shall be put to death. 16 Therefore the people of Israel shall keep the Sabbath, observing the Sabbath throughout their generations, as a covenant forever. 17 It is a sign forever between me and the people of Israel that in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, and on the seventh day he rested and was refreshed.’ ”

We know that God made covenants with His people, and each covenant has a sign of that covenant. The Noahic covenant has the sign of a rainbow, the Abrahamic covenant circumcision, and now the Mosaic covenant, has the sign of the Sabbath.

The Sabbath is a covenant sign.

Now we read, in Deuteronomy 5:12-15

Deuteronomy 5:12–15 NASB95

12 ‘Observe the sabbath day to keep it holy, as the Lord your God commanded you. 13 ‘Six days you shall labor and do all your work, 14 but the seventh day is a sabbath of the Lord your God; in it you shall not do any work, you or your son or your daughter or your male servant or your female servant or your ox or your donkey or any of your cattle or your sojourner who stays with you, so that your male servant and your female servant may rest as well as you. 15 ‘You shall remember that you were a slave in the land of Egypt, and the Lord your God brought you out of there by a mighty hand and by an outstretched arm; therefore the Lord your God commanded you to observe the sabbath day.

Here we also see that a Sabbath is a reminder of God’s redemption. So, it is a reminder of the paradise they lost, and the paradise they are to gain? Imagine the God who cursed Adam, now through the law provides respite to that curse. The sabbath is also a glimmer of hope for the way things would be.

The Sabbath law was therefore instituted by God that men should set apart the seventh day of the week as a day of rest, and those who broke that law faced the penalty of death.

So, going back to my three observations I gave at the beginning, is this a greater law or lesser law? Well the death penalty kind of makes it great, doesn’t it?

What about the law itself? Is it a moral, ceremonial, or civic law? Well, as much as this is debated, it appears to me, a ceremonial law, a covenant sign. The Sabbath here is being used by God as a symbol to remind His people of the rest intended in creation, and the rest that God promised to restore by sanctifying and redeeming them.

What then of the principles that undergird this law? They remain.

Exegesis

Matthew 12:1–8 ESV

1 At that time Jesus went through the grainfields on the Sabbath. His disciples were hungry, and they began to pluck heads of grain and to eat. 2 But when the Pharisees saw it, they said to him, “Look, your disciples are doing what is not lawful to do on the Sabbath.” 3 He said to them, “Have you not read what David did when he was hungry, and those who were with him: 4 how he entered the house of God and ate the bread of the Presence, which it was not lawful for him to eat nor for those who were with him, but only for the priests? 5 Or have you not read in the Law how on the Sabbath the priests in the temple profane the Sabbath and are guiltless? 6 I tell you, something greater than the temple is here. 7 And if you had known what this means, ‘I desire mercy, and not sacrifice,’ you would not have condemned the guiltless. 8 For the Son of Man is lord of the Sabbath.”

The pharisees had taken this law of hope and turned it into a burden. [paces allowed, rabbinic addition]. Not walking beyond a certain distance on the Sabbath is easy compared to the confession of sin and the sanctification of the word that the Sabbath was meant to bring to the heart of the Jew.

The pharisees could not see that the One they spoke to was the Lord who rested on the seventh day and hallowed it. He is Lord of the Sabbath. He instituted this symbol for the people, and He has the right to change its terms and to hold its covenant fulfilled.

What we find in the NT is that Jesus is an intentionally a serial Sabbath breaker according to Jewish standards. Has Jesus sinned then? No, He hasn’t just like David when he ate the bread of the Presence, or the priests when they work in the temple on the Sabbath. Because in breaking pattern, He did not compromise the principles of the Sabbath law. He upheld it. We see this in the verses that follow.

Matthew 12:9–14 ESV

9 He went on from there and entered their synagogue. 10 And a man was there with a withered hand. And they asked him, “Is it lawful to heal on the Sabbath?”—so that they might accuse him. 11 He said to them, “Which one of you who has a sheep, if it falls into a pit on the Sabbath, will not take hold of it and lift it out? 12 Of how much more value is a man than a sheep! So it is lawful to do good on the Sabbath.” 13 Then he said to the man, “Stretch out your hand.” And the man stretched it out, and it was restored, healthy like the other. 14 But the Pharisees went out and conspired against him, how to destroy him.

Look at what is happening. The pharisees are held up on the legality of the law based upon the content of the law, while disregarding the intent of the law.

But what does Jesus do? He asks a man to ‘stretch out his whithered hand’, a hand that reminds everyone in that room of the sin of man and the falleness of man from paradise. He then restores the man’s hand as God intends to redeem and restore His people once again. The healing of the man upholds the purpose of the Sabbath.

On the other hand, consider the pharisees who like slithering snakes conspires to destroy him, on the Sabbath. It is lawful to do good on the Sabbath!

One of the greatest incidents as we studied in John 5, was when Jesus gets up on the Sabbath day and goes to the pool at Bethesda full of sick people, and walks over to one man, and heals him. Jesus intentionally provoked the religious sentiment of the Jews over the Sabbath. He was here to break their tradition that was not set upon the principles for which the Sabbath law was given.

And we read, in John 5:15-17

John 5:15–17 ESV

15 The man went away and told the Jews that it was Jesus who had healed him. 16 And this was why the Jews were persecuting Jesus, because he was doing these things on the Sabbath. 17 But Jesus answered them, “My Father is working until now, and I am working.”

Mark 2:27 ESV

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

Man was not made to make the Sabbath holy, the Sabbath was made holy in order that man may enjoy it. God gave us a holiday. Not for mere hedonistic purposes, but to rest in the purposes of God, in both creation and redemption.

Conclusion

Must we keep the Sabbath law?

Nowhere in the NT do we find a reiteration or a re-emphasis of the Sabbath law as it was given in the Mosaic covenant. And there is a reason. Because in the great revelation of the Gospel, we have been given the true rest that the Sabbath symbolised. For our rest is in Christ.

Matthew 11:28–30 NASB95

28 “Come to Me, all who are weary and heavy-laden, and I will give you rest. 29 “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. 30 “For My yoke is easy and My burden is light.”

In Hebrews 4, we read of how God’s rest existed since the beginning but the disobedient generations couldn’t enter into that rest.

Hebrews 4:9–11 ESV

9 So then, there remains a Sabbath rest for the people of God, 10 for whoever has entered God’s rest has also rested from his works as God did from his. 11 Let us therefore strive to enter that rest, so that no one may fall by the same sort of disobedience.

There is a final rest that awaits those who rest in God today, and don’t fall into the same sort of disobedience.

Therefore, the binding ceremonial law of the Sabbath according to the Mosaic covenant was not simply abolished, it was fulfilled in Christ. He is our final rest.

[We don’t disregard the righteous requirement of the law / we don’t disregard the principle of rest]

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Romans 14 - Keeping holy days

Romans 14:5–6 ESV

5 One person esteems one day as better than another, while another esteems all days alike. Each one should be fully convinced in his own mind. 6 The one who observes the day, observes it in honor of the Lord. The one who eats, eats in honor of the Lord, since he gives thanks to God, while the one who abstains, abstains in honor of the Lord and gives thanks to God.

We don’t keep the Sabbath, but instead we keep the Lord’s Day?

Revelation 1:10 ESV

10 I was in the Spirit on the Lord’s day, and I heard behind me a loud voice like a trumpet

The first ever time we see the Bible use that term. The book of revelation was the last book written well into the life of the church, and John refers to the Lord’s day.

We see in the NT verses that suggest that the church set apart the first day of every week for worship gatherings. From sabbath, the last day of the week, to the Lord’s day, the first day of the week.

Acts 20:7 ESV

7 On the first day of the week, when we were gathered together to break bread, Paul talked with them, intending to depart on the next day, and he prolonged his speech until midnight.

1 Corinthians 16:2 ESV

2 On the first day of every week, each of you is to put something aside and store it up, as he may prosper, so that there will be no collecting when I come.

Jesus Resurrection

Luke 24:1 ESV

1 But on the first day of the week, at early dawn, they went to the tomb, taking the spices they had prepared.

Jesus Appearance to the disciples and then to Thomas the following Sunday.

The Holy Spirit coming on the day of Pentecost in Acts 2, which fell on a Sunday.

So, we the church keep the Lord’s day, not the way the Pharisees did the Sabbath. We are not bound by law, we are bound by Christ. We do not forsake the gathering or to keep the Lord’s day holy out of a commandment to do so. We do it out of love and reverance for God, and a love for His church.