Sermon Tone Analysis

Creation

Creation

God creates the world in 6 days and leaves the 7th as a day of rest and our idea of Sabbat comes from this.

When God forms the world he does so in 6 days starting with the day of light, that when the first day is formed he speaks light into the chaos that is the world.

I really like how the message puts the first day becuase its funny but also really speaks to how there was this chaos.

listen to this Genesis 1:1-2

In this the world was really chaotic, there was disorder and and that nothingness we really can only imagine.

but God makes something from the nothingness and creates the earth and through the 6 following days he puts it to order and these days of work are capped with the idea of the day and night, on that day there was evening and morning, the third day.

however when we reach Genesis chapter 2 we see the 7th day and the rest that God has on the 7th day.

He blesses creation, he make the day Sabbat which is the root of sabbath meaning a holy day.

However in this rest we can see that there is no evening and no morning.

The 7th day had never ended.

It’s pretty crazy!

Like we are still in the 7th day right now?

No, that’s not really right, we are not still in that seventh day, metophorically the day never ended becuase it was a day of enternal rest and that is signifed by the day having no beginning or end.

This shows a few differenet things, the first being that God is outside of our time bounds, he is alpha and omega and thus he does not follow through with our 24 hour day cycles.

It also shows that his rest is eternal rest and this is one of the big ideas, that with God rest is eternal, there is no beginning to it or no end, becuase it is what we really should define Sabbath as, a day of rest with God, one that has no beginning or end in the sense of physical time.

We all have to go back to work on monday, but could you imagine what life would look like if you had eternal rest in God that you could not feel the beginning or end of resting with him?

OT Sabbath

See then the sabbath takes a turn as Isreal is slaves in eygpt and through the Exodus we see that they can finally acheive this rest that they have longed for.

So when traveling to the promised land they are given a command to rest, the fifth of the ten commands for us to rest and the reason it’s number 4 is that they are ordered in the means of God to others, so number one being the most about God, no other lords before the lord.

with ten talking about coveting and this being solely about loving your neighbor, how can you love your neighbor if you wish you had their house.

So when we read the sabbath as lumped in with the loving the lord part of the ten, we can see it’s true meaning as being to spend time and to love God the father, that is what the intentions of Sabbath are.

Even more to add on to the idea of Sabbath is that Israel would stretch this idea of Sabbath and the holy number 7 to create fesitvals and celebrations that were to draw them closer to God and this idea of eternal rest with him.

they streched this idea to sabbath years, could you imagine a whole year of no work.

Sounds like what Covid was for a bit, maybe something we wouldn’t like.

Sabbath year is all about rest in our lives as well as creation and this one would be hard for the farmers, but the idea is that they would not sow in their fields and rather let it grow what ever it grew to eat.

The sabbath year again was to reconnect in the rest, that God was present and I think about the birds and the lilies from Matthew 6, that they had to trust in God to take care of them in all that they would do.

The idea of a year Sabbath comes around to that eternal rest that they could has a taste of what it will be like to rest with God when they are reunited.

Then we come around every 7x7 years to the year of jubilee and that it again is a year of rest but also a year of freedom from debts and freedom for slaves.

Rest in the ultimate sense as there is no more burdens.

So this idea of Sabbath not being a day of avoidance of work but rather a finishing of work to reclaim relationship means so much more.

Altought we do not use these 7x sabbath years or the jubliee, we can still see the relational power that keeping the Sabbath holy means.

Sabbath Laws

The religous leaders take new extenstions from what is allowed and what is not allowed of the sabbath as a form of law rather then a highlight of practice.

We know that inbetween when the Sabbath was set forward as a commandment that the religious leaders of Israel started to change the focus from the relationional reconection to the obedience to law.

Which Sabbath altough a command was never made to command us and was never made to rule us, and this where we really need to look at how Jesus redifines the Sabbath as something more then just a rigid rulebook on days of rest.

Jesus redefining Sabbath

Here we see Jesus starting to break that mold of what rule based Sabbath was all about, and he redefines it as something that really needs to be focused no on what we do.

If we lived a legalistic sabbath we would have a hard time coming to church, at least me anyways as my car is a push to start and in Jewdeism pushing buttons is on the sabbath is not proper, that is why if you are in Israel during a sabbath they will have the elevators hit every floor so that their is no need for the person to press a button.

Our idea of legality when it comes to the sabbath hold us back from a fuller experience of what sabbath is really supposed to be.

Finally we come to John 5:8 and Jesus healing a lame man who cannot walk, he heals him and tells him this, John 5:8

This day also being a Sabbath, shows it was not about the action of picking of his mat, as again to pick up the mat was against the sabbath.

The command to pick up the mat and the obidence to do it is in honor and respect to the one who heals.

The man breaks the Sabbath laws set by man to follow the one who heals.

I think of it as even funnier how this man does not recognize Jesus and does not know him after he leaves, it is only one Jesus returns and says to him in John 5:14

that he is able to tell the pharasies who Jesus it.

Which then leads to the confronting again that Jesus is disobeying the sabbath to where he begins to reveal himself in the gosepl of John.

Jesus does not call the man towards a rigid form of the Sabbath, rather he calls him to a better understanding fo relationship with God.

it is not about the rule of picking up the mat, it is about the posture of the person towards God and his law.

See you are well!

sin no more.

Jesus was never going to agree with the Sabbath laws in the way they had been layed out by the Pharises.

We can see that becuase scholar believe Jesus to have started his ministry.

Especially as they shifted so much away from the true intention, so fianlly Jesus takes it into his hands and redfines what it is all about.

He does this through a few ways,

the first that scholars will say Jesus started his ministry on a Sunday.

the seconad is through these encounters

the third is through his death, as Jesus stays dead through the sabbath day, saturday.

Not symbolizing that death won, and h needed to be dead for that long, rather to symbolize that resting day that God has, just as the father rests, so does the son.

Through his death and ressurection we are invited into the forgivness of sins, the eternal life, but also the eternal rest.

The true meaning of Sabbath has come through the death and ressurection of Christ.

So truly we cannot have Sabbath, in it’s truest form if we do not have it with Jesus.

What is your Sabbath, traditional or untraditional?

Are you finding your rest with God?

are you present with him, or are you still restless.

We think of restless nights filled with no sleep but constantly checking the clock.

Rest in its purest form is sleeping in and waking up to the smell of eggs and bacon.

Since rest is not just how you sleep in the night but it is also how you start the week again.

I remember when I used to do camp ministry and the camp had monday to sunday camps and the Sabbath for me was from 1-2:00pm on Sunday when I know my campers left for the week until 12:00pm on Monday, where I got to settle into my cabin and eat a meal with my fellow cabin leaders.

Altought it does not follow a 24 hour Sabbath it was still a time where I could reflect about how God was present in the week.

I could take time and think about how next week was going to go, perpare my heart.

Sit quiet before the Lord and the best part too was have some free time to have fun.

Having joy and doing something fun on the Sabbath is biblical too!

We are not supposed to be Robots of work.

Are you with God in your sabbath, does it reflect that Eternal rest that you will recceive.

One thing that is so present in Revelation is that restoration and recreation of what was to what will be.

That the garden of Eden in all its splendor will not just be restored, but in it’s greatness would be even made new, made better.