Sermons from Lone
Rock Bible Church Sabbath: Remember, Rest, Refocus, Rejoice (Part 3) While the day of the week for Sabbath
rest has changed, the truth behind it has not. Jesus Christ makes the difference, as we
shall see: 1. Genesis and creation: the roots of
rest We are going to pick up the Sabbath
question, and it is a big one, an important one because it is one of the Ten Commandments.
Recall they are not suggestions, they are not recommendations, they are commandments and
they do reflect the eternal character of an eternal God. Exodus 20 I have a friend who can tell the story
better than I, but it has to do with an outing. The outing has been planned for a long
time, it was designed to be fun, restful, and a memorable occasion, and of the three,
memorable it was. Because it involved a fishing trip at a distant lake, getting underway
late on Friday to take advantage of the entire weekend, the Dad discovered that his
trailer tires were flat and needed to be pumped up and then repaired before they could get
underway. They left hours later only to discover
enroute that they had no life jackets, so would whip into a sports place on the way to
pick up a couple, only to discover that the store was closed and they would have to keep
driving until the next day where maybe they would be able to scare up some jackets. They
got to their camping site which they had reserved, a hundred or so miles away from home,
only to learn that their site had been given to other people because they were so late. The next morning they launched the
boat, got to the middle of the lake, the fish are not biting and the motor dies. They were
towed to shore, no fish, no fun, lots of headaches, quite a memory. It is interesting how something that
could be intended to be restful turns out to be quite a burden. It is interesting how
restful refreshing can turn burdensome and then to ridiculous -- kind of like the Sabbath.
What God had laid out as a benevolent act toward people who needed a break went from that
to burdensome even to, in some cases, ridiculous. For instance, the rabbis taught on the
Sabbath you could not eat an egg that had been laid on the Sabbath day by the hen unless
the hen was a fryer or intended to be eaten so that the egg then became a part of the hen
rather than an independent entity all its own. The Sabbath has been to say tweaked,
over the centuries, would be putting it mildly. It has gone from restful to burdensome and
in some cases ridiculous and yet it remains one of God’s commandments. It is our
responsibility to understand it and to keep it in accordance with biblical understanding. We want to jump into point three
today, but by way of review, we have taken the Sabbath through time beginning in Genesis
and creation, the roots of rest. We learned that God ordained three institutions:
marriage, work, and rest prior to sin entering the world. So we have something of a
glimpse of what God’s ideal might be. We went to the book of Exodus. We saw where God
gave this as a command, the rule of rest. We learned that God has sanctified time. He is
lord over time. He is lord over our work, and He is Lord over our rest as well. He has
given a special gift of a day a week, we learn in Exodus, and it is all about our attitude
toward that day. The roots of Mothers’ Day began
back in 1905. A single lady named Anna Jarvis so revered her mother that she began
lobbying for a special day. It began in her church and
in her hometown in West Virginia and she continued to lobby and campaign
until in 1914 President Wilson declared the first Mothers’ Day directly linked to
Anna Jarvis’ high esteem for her mother. She felt that mothers were unappreciated and
tended to be overlooked and needed to be venerated, if you will. She succeeded, but that
is not the whole story. Only a matter of years following the
establishment of Mothers’ Day by President Wilson, Anna Jarvis again took to the
streets, only this time to lobby against Mothers’ Day. Her mother had been an
aficionado of carnations. Carnations became the flower of Mothers’ Day, sort of
unofficially. Picking up on that, entrepreneurs began selling carnations and making a buck
on Mothers’ Day. Anna Jarvis said, no, this is wrong.
You have taken what was a beautiful thing, a matter of the heart, and turned it into
something commercial. Legend said she was even arrested and jailed for her part in
protesting the very day she had established. Isn’t it interesting how things
go, how people can take that which is given as a good gift and somehow turn it around to
where it is not at all what it was intended. That is what it was with the Sabbath. In the book of Joshua, following the
giving of the Law, it did not take the children of Israel very long to demonstrate that
they were not going to do very well with God’s Law. In the book of Joshua, after they
had been given the Promised Land, after they had been allocated their various portions of
real estate, which they were to possess and live in villages they did not build and drink
water from wells they did not dig and so forth, they did not do well. They failed. They
did not follow through on what God had told them to do. Rather than God’s people
standing apart as a holy, separate, sanctified nation, they began to be influenced by the
resident nations who they should have dispossessed. I’ll share a verse from the book
of Judges, kind of a summary statement in the second chapter. It says Joshua had passed away and they buried him
in the hills of Ephraim, then in Judges 2: 10All that generation also were gathered to their fathers; and
there arose another generation after them who did not know the LORD, nor yet the work
which He had done for Israel. It was downhill from there. They
lapsed into idolatry and all, that God had given them that was good, they began to
distort, to change, or to ignore. The bulk of the Old Testament is a chronicle of a tragic
decline of a people who had been given absolutely every imaginable advantage by Almighty
God -- His very presence, His clear word, His pillar of fire by night and cloud by day. He
gave them prophets and kings. He gave them everything that they would have needed. They
still walked away. Those stories in the Bible, the kings
and the decline and the immorality are not so much a story of a God of wrath and
vengeance, which is what He is so often wrongfully accused of being. It is a testament to
God’s patience and kindness and forbearance with people who ill-deserved anything
good from His mighty hand, until He sent them out of the land into exile. He sent them out
in two ways. He sent the northern kingdom out in 722 B.C. and later the southern kingdom
in about 600 B.C. until they were gone from the land, relocated, expatriated,
transplanted, given the boot, and out they went into exile. Let me read a couple passages of the
Bible from a couple of the prophets, prophets who were right there as the children of
Israel were being sent away for their crimes against God. These verses come from Jeremiah
and Ezekiel. They were guilty of a number of crimes. Jeremiah
17 This tells that this is a
stiff-necked, hard-hearted, anti-God bunch. They have done things with God’s Sabbath.
Common sense tells me I do not want to do what they did. These guys are wrong and they
received God’s punishment for it. Elsewhere in Ezekiel 20, verses 13,
16, 24, Ezekiel says the same thing that, in certain measure, the reason I am kicking you
out of the land is because you have decided not to keep my Sabbath. That makes it serious.
It did not take very long, right there in Judges 2, the nation’s devotion turned
south quickly and just kept going. That’s not the end of the story
about the Sabbath. That is actually only the beginning because we are going to Jesus with
this, to the time of Christ. Over 600 years time interesting things happen to God’s
people in exile. They were kicked out east to Babylon, today it would be called Iraq.
Imagine that you are among the Hebrew people. You are an Israelite and your entire
identity as a people is wrapped up in being in your land that God had given you,
designated by literal geographic boundaries, delivered there supernaturally by the
crossing of the Red Sea, the wandering in the wilderness, the sustenance of the manna,
having sandals and clothes that did not wear, and getting in through stopping the Jordan
River. The walls of Jericho, the whole bit. Miracle after miracle after miracle and this
is all about God’s people. They should be relishing their relationship with the
living God. Imagine your whole identity is there.
Ultimately the temple is built, the priests are put in place, sacrifices are offered, a
relationship to God as a nation is established and ongoing and now it is gone. It did not
leave. You left. To a distant land, a land full of foreigners, people who do not speak
your language, do not have your customs, do not care. A people who conquered you, now
relocated you. From a political standpoint,
economic standpoint, religious standpoint, you don’t know if you are afoot or on
horseback. Just out there. What are you going to do? You know, because the prophets have
done their job. You know you are there because you have offended the God of heaven. Here is how it went. Track with me
through a few highlights of history, ancient Hebrew history. When they were kicked out of
the land, they left behind their temple. They could no longer do the temple. They could no
longer do the festivals. They could no longer do the feasts. The priests are gone. The
sacrificial system is kaput. Their world is set on its head. All they had was their
Scriptures. All they could retain religiously, spiritually. They could not take temple.
The priests were no more. So something very interesting happened. Over the course of time,
for those who became known as the Jews, religion began to center around the Scriptures.
The Scriptures became the focal point of their attention. It was during this period of
time, which also largely was the time between the Old and the New Testaments that the
synagogue came into being. The synagogue was the center for study of the Scriptures.
Various teaching groups surfaced, among them rabbis with different schools of thought,
different ways of looking at the Scripture, among them a group we find out later are
called Pharisees They grew up during this time as well. The pursuit of the people, religiously
speaking, had to do with, “What does this stuff say?” “How are we supposed
to handle it?” They preached sermons about the Scriptures. They wrote commentaries
based on those sermons that began to fill volumes. Everything focused on the Law. Obviously I’m painting with a
broad brush and taking broad steps, but over time they learned they had to deal with the
Ten Commandments. They could see in a heartbeat that the Ten Commandments were the core of
all the rest and they needed to get a handle on it. They took a look at the ten and said,
“Can we do this stuff?” Next question: “How can we do this stuff?” “You shall have no other gods
besides Me.” OK, we’re there. One God, OK, we’re good there. “You shall not have a graven
image.” No chance. After what we have gone through? Idolatry, in a technical sense of
actually having an idol, was not known again among the children of Israel after that
exile. They learned that lesson. “You shall not take the name of
the Lord your God in vain.” “We can do this one,” they said, and they
figured out how they were going to do it. “We just won’t say it.” Beginning
then, the name of God was not to be uttered. Even today, as a serious Jewish person is
reading his Scripture or saying his prayers or discussing things religious he will not say
Yahweh. He would be deeply offended to hear me say it. He would never think of saying it
himself. He will simply say, “Adonai.” They are trained to say “Adonai.”
That way they can’t take the name of the Lord in vain because they aren’t saying
it. But it was the fourth commandment over
which they spilled considerable ink. They studied the Scriptures having to do with work.
This particular word “work” is found 39 times in the Old Testament so they
developed 39 categories of work and in each of those categories another 39 sub-definitions
of work. By the time of Jesus, there were over 1500 rules bearing directly on keeping the
Sabbath. Let me share just a few so we have an
appreciation of where this might go. Certainly one could not sew a button on the Sabbath.
Because of that, one was not allowed to carry a needle. These are written laws. As a
matter of fact, anything that weighed more than a dried fig, anything, could not be
carried, otherwise it was considered to be work. Those with false teeth were not to
wear them on the Sabbath because they might fall out and then would have to be picked up
off the ground. It was against the rules to cut or trim one’s toenails on the
Sabbath. Perhaps one of the most frustrating of all had to do with fairly serious
constipation, across a broad range of people, because you could not dig a hole on the
Sabbath. The burdens became pretty serious among the people. God presents a gift of a day, declares
it to be a good thing, and the people take it and by the time of Jesus it was not a good
thing at all. It was a heavy, heavy load and no one looked forward to the Sabbath. No one
saw it as anything other than an impossibly heavy burden, anything but a gift from a
loving God who said you need a day of rest. They were robbed even of their day of rest. Sometimes I go cosmic in my thinking.
Sometimes I step back and I think in different terms. Along came Jesus. We use this verse
often at Christmas, Galatians 4:4, “When the fullness of time had come,” in
other words, at the right time, “God sent forth His Son.” It looks so good at
Christmas time. The rest of the verse says, “Born of a woman, born under the Law, in
order that He might rescue those who are under the Law.” When Jesus showed up. He showed up
fully in concert with the will of God as far as the Law is concerned, but He showed up
among a people who had so convoluted the Law, so tweaked it, so changed it, so distorted
it, that it had become, not a source of blessing, but a source of grief to the very people
it was intended to bless. Proverbs chapter 8, is a delightful
section of Hebrew poetry in which wisdom is personified. That is to say wisdom is given
human traits. Wisdom is actually going to be speaking to us in Proverbs 8, and
interestingly, beyond that, wisdom is ascribed to Messiah Jesus. This is a creation story, about
creation and the part that wisdom/Messiah played in the creation. 27"When He established the heavens, I was there, John 1:1, In the beginning was the
Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.
This is exciting stuff! This gives us a glimpse, a window into the
interaction between the Father and Son who were together before creation and participated
in creation. What a joyous text it is. It was a good time, and He found His joy and His
blessing among the sons of God. It was a great event. Jesus was in on it from the
beginning. 32"Now therefore, O sons, listen to me, God says I am the designer, I am the
creator. If you want to be blessed; that is, if you want to enjoy my focused favor, keep
My ways. I know what I am talking about. I know, He says. 33"Heed instruction and be wise, That is, order your world around the
real presence of a living God who cares and who has spoken. 34"Blessed is the man who listens to me, Not like in Jeremiah’s day where
God had to intercept those fools who were carrying their burdens and adulterating the day
of rest. No, these were different gates. Different voice. Different everything. 35"For he who finds me finds life How clear could it be? This is Jesus. Jesus is speaking. We
can easily give these words to Him and now He shows up. He shows up on the scene, first
century Palestine, if you will. They have had hundreds of years to mess up the Bible, and
they did. He shows up. Not only has He designed and created and sustained these people,
but He wrote the book they messed up. He enters the scene and says you just have to get
this right. You and I can well imagine that He
will not be greeted with open arms by the religious people. He is going to come to them
with new wine and all they have to put it in are old wineskins. It is not going to work
and He knows it. Let’s give Jesus that
much credit. He knows where this is going. He is going to hit them on other items, but
certainly He is going to hit them on the notion of the Sabbath because it permeates their
lives and through the rules of the Sabbath, the religious leaders and the teachers have
suppressed and lorded it over people. It is a control issue now. It has to be fixed. Turn to Matthew 5, Jesus and the
Sabbath, the renewal of rest. Now that it has been ruined, let’s see how Jesus
handled it. We will not get to the punch line for a week, but I hope this will help get us
there. Matthew 5 through 7, constitute what is known as the Sermon on the Mount. These are
words that Jesus obviously chose very carefully and chose in light of what He knew would
be His opposition. I want to start with verses 17 through
20 because this lays the foundation for the rest of where He will go with regard to the
Sabbath itself. These are general terms. Jesus said: 17"Do not think that I came to abolish the Law or the
Prophets; Why would He say that? He said that
because He is anticipating this is what they are going to think. Here is this guy coming
out of the blue with all these new ideas. This guy is trying to do away with our system.
He is trying to get rid of the Law! Jesus said no, I did not come to abolish but to
fulfill. 18"For truly I say to you, until heaven and earth pass away,
not the smallest letter or stroke shall pass from the Law until all is accomplished. Didn’t He say in John 3, that
unless you are born again you would not enter the kingdom of heaven? I think those are
serious words too. Let’s look at them carefully. In the first place, I would like to
point out that Jesus uses strong language. He says I did not in any way come to abolish
but to fulfill. The smallest letter or stroke shall in no way -- He is very, very
clear in the language -- that there is no sense in which this is going to happen. Secondly, whenever Jesus says “Truly,”
He is telling us to stop and believe Him. “For truly I say to you,” I am not
making this up. Please take Me at My word. This is very serious. He uses strong language
and He connected the continuity and the fulfillment of the Law. He talks about heaven and
earth passing away until all is accomplished. He does not connect that to anything
theological. He does not say, for instance, until the Holy Spirit shows up at Pentecost or
until Israel is made a nation in 1948. None of this stuff, He says nothing changes from My
biblical intent, from the beginning of all time, until heaven and earth pass away. We have the blessed good fortune to
live in the Bitterroot Valley. Those mountains point up there. They are still there, and
so that means it stands as written, as intended. He uses strong language. He issues a serious warning in verse
19. Whoever then annuls one of the least of these commandments and so teaches others shall
be called least in the kingdom of heaven. In other words, don’t tweak the
Commandments! Don’t mess with them, don’t try to change them. Don’t try to
say that doesn’t mean that any more. Don’t mess with them. The Ten Commandments are eternal in
that they reflect the eternal character of an eternal, unchanging God. Don’t mess
with the Commandments. To do that means you are playing fast and loose with the very
character of the God who has revealed Himself. Tread lightly. There is a serious warning
here. Don’t change them. Don’t abolish them, like some Pharisees had and, dare I
say it, some Christians have. They are to be done. They are to be taught. He could not
have said it more clearly. Strong language. Serious warning. High stakes. Look at verse 20. This is a tough
verse! Your righteousness, He says, must exceed that of the scribes and Pharisees. You
have to do better than they, or forget about seeing heaven. With language like that, I
become all ears because that is serious talk. What does it mean? There is light shed for
us, thankfully, from the Scripture itself. Turn to Luke 18. Jesus told this parable to
certain ones, this is such a key issue, who trusted in themselves that they were
righteous, and viewed others with contempt. 9And He also told this parable to some people who trusted in
themselves that they were righteous, and viewed others with contempt: “I am righteous.” Let’s
stop for just a second. Any of those items He listed -- how many of them are wrong? None
of them are. He said that I am not a swindler. Good. I’m not unjust. That’s
good. I’m not an adulterer. I’m not like this tax gatherer. By the way, tax
gatherers at face value were clearly the dregs of Jewish society. They were enlisted by
the Romans to collect taxes from their fellow countrymen, the Jews, and the only way they
made their living was on what you might call commission, that is, how much they could rip
them off. They were turncoats in the eyes of
a good Jew, and a Pharisee was a good Jew. So he is saying “I’m glad I’m
not a turncoat, I’m glad I am not disloyal. He says I fast twice a week. That’s
good. And he says, “I pay tithes of all that I get.” There is nothing there that
is bad and this is his righteousness. He sees these as his points of righteousness and
from that standpoint he is correct. These are righteous deeds. Pay tithes of all I get.
Not a bad thing. When Jesus saw the old woman put her
last penny in the treasury, He did not stop her. Sacrificial giving is a good thing.
Clearly Jesus knew she would be taken care of. She trusted the same. But giving is a good
thing. Tithing is a good thing. Giving is to be a joyful, willing, happy act of worship.
If it is not, is there something wrong with God? No, there is something wrong with me.
That is how it is supposed to be, so this particular Pharisee in question at the temple is
righteous to a point. His acts are good. It’s good not to swindle. It’s good not
to be unjust. But Jesus, going back to Matthew 5, says you have to do better. You have to
have righteousness that is not just on the outside, but also on the inside and that is why
we look at this other fellow in Luke 18. 13"But the tax collector, standing some distance away, was
even unwilling to lift up his eyes to heaven, but was beating his breast, saying, 'God, be
merciful to me, the sinner!' Justified means “declared
righteous” by God. So his righteousness exceeds that of the Pharisees because his
righteousness is also on the inside. He is not trusting external deeds. for
everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, but he who humbles himself will be
exalted." Jesus is saying the inside as well as the outside must be right. Elsewhere in Scripture it also will say that if the inside is right with God, the outside will change as well. That is the order in which it is designed to work. These are high stakes. In other words, if you do not have righteousness on the inside you can forget heaven. Both the inside and the outside of a person must be right. Really, isn’t that the first question anyway? Before we even talk about how we do Sabbath, how we do God’s day of rest. We are getting ahead of ourselves if we do not stop and say, “How is my inside?” Who am I trusting? That Pharisee was trusting in himself. He is trusting in what he has done. So many people, I dare say the vast majority of people in our culture say if it comes right down to getting into heaven what I have done, I am pretty sure, is going to outweigh the bad stuff. That is nothing more than trusting our own righteousness. "Scripture
taken from the NEW AMERICAN STANDARD BIBLE®, Jim Carlson 2006, Lone Rock Bible Church, Stevensville Montana, USA |