Sermons from Lone
Rock Bible Church Sabbath: Remember, Rest, Refocus, Rejoice (Part 5) 1. Genesis and creation: the roots of
rest Exodus 20 There is a story about a Dad who was
taking his family on vacation years ago. He pulled his station wagon full of kids into a
motel in a distant town, absolutely dead beat after driving all day long. It has been hot,
no air conditioning in the car. He goes to the clerk at the desk and says, “We really
desperately need a room” She says, “I’m sorry sir, our rooms are all taken.
We are full.” He asked, ”Do you have anything
for me and my family? You don’t have any idea what we have gone through. We really
need a room for the night. I’ll pay extra.” She said, “Sir, I’m sorry,
our motel is full.” He said, “What if the president of the United States were to
come in here right now and ask for a room. What would you do if I was the president of the
United States?” The clerk replied, “I guess if
you were the president we would probably find something.” He said, “I have news
for you. The president is not coming to your motel tonight, so why don’t you give me
the room you were going to give him.” When the president shows up, that
changes everything. And on the authority of the Bible and of all human history, I think it
is very safe to say that when Jesus shows up, that changes everything on a much grander
scale. Jesus did show up. We have talked for several weeks now about this notion of
Sabbath, the fourth commandment. Six separate occasions in the gospel accounts Jesus
showed up on the Sabbath and did an amazing work each time. He is accused of being in
violation of what was God’s will. Jesus has to straighten them out, had to teach them
that when I bring new wine it only fits and stays in new wineskins. It is time to think
differently because now Jesus is here, He is Son of Man and Son of Man is Lord of the
Sabbath. Re-think it. Brothers and sisters, that is our challenge too. Whatever Jesus says
as Lord of the Sabbath goes for His people. What we are going to touch on this
morning is Jesus and the renewal of rest. When Jesus delivered the Sermon on the Mount He
was fully aware that He was going to take shots from all sides with regard to His handling
of the Old Testament. By the way He was responsible for authorizing so He knew what it
meant and what it said, but He knew He would be accused of changing God’s law. Jesus said very clearly, “I did
not come to abolish but to fulfill.” He said absolutely nothing will change as long
as there is heaven and earth. That is because the law of God reflects the character of God
and the character of God will never, ever change. Jesus said count on it. That gives us a
hint about the Sabbath. There is a principle in the fourth commandment that stands because
it represents a facet of the character of God. Jesus healed a man in the synagogue
and pointed out that the Sabbath was made for man, the people, not people for the Sabbath.
We are not supposed to fit our lives in a frustrating, burdensome sense into a arbitrary
day just to make life more difficult, as had been done in the days of Jesus. The Son of
Man is Lord of the Sabbath. Jesus straightened out a number of difficult situations on the
Sabbath, health related situations, error-related situations. Jesus restored God’s
notion that the Sabbath, the day of rest, is a day for good things to happen. The Sabbath
day is a day for good. It is a day for growth of the kingdom of God. It is a day for a
clear view of God. It is a day of rest and rejoicing for the people of God. It is an
important day. Renewal now by what we call
resurrection and revival. Here it gets serious. I am going to suggest on the evidence of
Scripture that God ordained a change in the day of rest from the seventh day to the first,
from the Saturday, as was Jewish tradition, to Sunday, which has become church tradition.
Think of it this way. When Jesus shows up, things change. With the crucifixion and the
resurrection and the ascension of Jesus and the birth of the church, what believers once
viewed as circumcision as an outward sign of entrance into the kingdom of God, the Bible
says is now taken care of by baptism. There has been a change. What once was celebrated by
the disciples of Jesus and called Passover changed with His advent to the Lord’s
Supper. Change -- and in tandem with that, I
am suggesting that the ceremonial day, which always had been Saturday, the seventh day, by
virtue of the arrival of Jesus and following events, changed also from Saturday to Sunday.
Let me suggest one primary reason is the resurrection of Jesus on the first day of the
week. It is interesting that when Jesus was crucified, He was crucified on Friday.
Passover and Sabbath were on Saturday and Jesus, I believe, symbolically rested on
Saturday. He rested in the tomb on Saturday. His body was there. But on Sunday, the first
day of the week, He rose from the dead in eternal, decisive victory, a day that did not go
unnoticed by His people. Sunday worship, since then, has been the day of worship for
Christian believers. Several interesting facts in light of
that. First, the resurrection of Jesus received more preaching emphasis by the apostles
than any other topic. The foundation of their hope, the foundation of the gospel was in
the fact that Jesus was crucified according to the Scriptures. He was buried. On the third
day He rose from the dead, according to the Scriptures, and He appeared. The apostle Paul
and others said all our hope rests there. If He is not risen from the dead, we are still
in our sins, we have no hope whatsoever. The resurrection was huge, whether the
apostles were preaching to Jewish audiences on the one hand or absolute pagan audiences on
the other, they always brought their argument back to the fact that Jesus had been dead
and in accordance with prophecy and the grace of God, He was alive again the first day.
The resurrection received more preaching emphasis than did any other topic by the
apostles. Secondly, the first day of the week is
mentioned in Acts 20:7, I Corinthians 16:2 as that day which was a meeting day for
Christians. It was assumed among the Christian believers that their meeting day was on the
first day of the week. Some would say would that not be a debatable issue? It would have
been a debatable issue if we had read more about it in the Scripture. Other things were debatable -- the
issue of circumcision, whether or not an individual needed to become a Jew -- that was
debatable. That was in Scripture. Behavioral issues were debatable, that surface in
Scripture. The whole notion of unity in the body of Christ is a huge topic in the New
Testament which is there all the time. Those issues that were not a point of concern did
not need to be mentioned, therefore were not and this is one of them. The believers began
meeting on the first day of the week because that was the day Jesus had been raised. In addition, the day of resurrection
being the first day of the week is the only named day of Jesus’ life. We do not know
which day of the week He was born. We do not know which day of the week He was baptized.
We are not told, although the implication is strong, what day He died. But repeatedly in
Scripture the first day is the day He was raised. Only the resurrection, and every mention
of Sabbath after the resurrection, every mention of Sabbath in the New Testament beyond
that is only mentioned in the context of evangelism among Jews. In other words, the
apostle would go to the synagogue on the Sabbath because that is where the Jews were
meeting and that is where he would want to interact with them and share the gospel. All
other meetings of Christians are first day meetings. We say we have sort of a case there,
but maybe the people got it wrong. Maybe this was man’s idea, this first day thing,
and not God’s idea. Maybe they made a connection that they did not really need to
make, this business of starting worship on Sunday. After all, these were the apostles and
they were merely people, and perhaps were subject to an error in judgment. OK, maybe so.
People effect this resurrection, the first day thing.
However, the next event was not. The next event occurred 50 days after
Passover, a Saturday. It occurred on a
Sunday, and that was all God -- the day of Pentecost. The disciples in the 2nd
chapter of Acts were meeting in the upper room, unsure what was going to come, having been
told by the risen Jesus to hang out in Jerusalem until the Holy Spirit shows up, until
they are clothed with power from on high. You know how the story goes, how they were in
the upper room and suddenly there is a sound, a rush of a mighty wind. They hear the noise
and they see tongues as of fire resting on these various disciples and then languages
spoken. Phenomenal does not begin to describe it, because what was happening at that
moment in that day in Jerusalem was the birth of the bride of Christ, the church. This is not pyrotechnics, these
tongues of fire. This is the Abrahamic covenant being reemphasized and underscored. This
is God’s way of saying, indeed, My glory to the nations. There were Jews there,
gathered from around the Mediterranean and they heard the praises of God in their own
language being spoken by people who had never learned the language. They understood then
about Jesus’ words about the gospel. They understood a little more about this
business of Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, and the uttermost parts of the earth. The notion of
the Abrahamic covenant that all the nations of the world will be blessed through the seed
of Abraham began to make sense to them. Jesus’ last words, we call it the Great
Commission, make disciples of all the nations, baptizing, teaching them all things I have
commanded you, baptizing them in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.
There it is, there it is happening with all the nations. The gospel is going forth and
they get a glimmer of the kingdom of God and the covenant of Abraham. That’s not all. Remember what the
scoffers were saying? What is with these people? They evidently have been hitting the
bottle a little too early in the morning today. Peter stood up and said you have got to be
kidding me. It’s only 9 a.m. No, this is exactly what was spoken through the prophet
Joel, that with Messiah comes Spirit. In the ensuing sermon that Peter, who days before
had been a frightened fisherman, had denied three times knowing his Lord in His very
presence, now Peter is preaching a sermon saturated with Scripture, preaching with power.
He is saying this Jesus whom you crucified is the object of saving faith. He is the key to
heaven. The Bible says that day 3,000 people
were converted. We see then God’s promise to Abraham coming to fulfillment. We see
Jesus as the object of saving faith and we see the birth of the church is the people of
God. There they are. It’s all in Jerusalem for a time, temporarily. We see corporate
identity of the people of God. Now what are we supposed to do, they are thinking? The
Bible talks about how they gathered around the apostles because the apostles had gotten
the truth from Jesus. The apostles were the ones to share what Jesus had told them to
share. All the people gathered around for their instruction and their training and their
teaching. Through the course of the infant days of the church the first day was the day
they met. Not only because that was the day of the resurrection, but emphatically because
that was the day the Spirit showed up in power, the day of Pentecost. Those two were
clinchers -- resurrection, Pentecost, and according to New Testament evidence, the word
Sabbath was exchanged for the expression, “The Lord’s Day.” Things changed
when Jesus showed up and it has been the Lord’s Day down to this day. We call it
Sunday, the first day of the week, and God wants us to honor Him on a day. The next point is called “Conclusion.”
Isn’t it time, then, for Christians to make a do and don’t list of Sabbath
activities. Should we not gather at the church, have a little council, take a vote and
say, “Can we do this, can we do that?” I would suggest that the minute we start
making lists, we are slipping dangerously close to what the Pharisees did and the scribes
and rabbis before them. What is it about the Lord’s Day anyway? What do we do with
it? Let’s remember first of all that
this day, according to what Scripture overwhelmingly teaches, is God’s gift to His
people. It is God’s gift of a day for rest, for reflection, to remember what God has
done, to remember His creative power, to remember how He has touched our lives, to
remember that He sent His Son, to remember that He paid the price, to remember that it is
all about Him. Generally speaking, it is a day to lay
off our livelihood. When it talks in Scripture about don’t do any work on the
Sabbath, that is the word for livelihood work. In other words, if you are working so much
that you think you have to work on the Lord’s Day, you are working too much.
Something else is wrong. Something needs to change. That happens. Sometimes we find
ourselves on that sort of treadmill. It is God’s way of saying lay off your
livelihood for a day because you need it. God’s people, all people, need a day of
rest. It is a physical fact. Rest physically. Rest emotionally. Reason spiritually. It is
a day to celebrate salvation and to anticipate final rest, the glory of eternal heaven and
rest with Him. It is a day to honor the Lord. I sat down and made myself a list of
ten items, ten items corresponding to the Ten Commandments. Is there something strange
about the fourth, to us? It seems as if, as we look at the Ten Commandments, we readily
confess and agree that those Ten reflect God’s character. That is why they do not
change. That is why they always stand. So we go through about nine of them and think this
makes sense, this applies. One through three and five through ten. Then we say, what do I
do with the fourth? I asked myself and I ask us here, how is God’s character
reflected in the other nine in our lives and why not the fourth? Here are suggestions. How do we handle
the other nine as expressions of God’s holy character? I think we cultivate healthy
habits. I think in light of verses like Romans 14:23, “Whatsoever is not of faith is
sin.” That is saying when you are making decisions as far as your spiritual behavior,
they need to be made along the lines of, “Will this please and honor God or is this
just something for me?” If it is just something for me, it is sin. But if it is an
attempt to please and honor God then it is OK, because it is of faith. I am moving toward
God in my attitude and consequently in my behavior. So I need to act in faith. In other
words, whatever I come up with for my Lord’s day needs to come out of a heart that
says I want to do something that would honor God. The other passage of Scripture is I
Corinthians 10:31, whatever you eat, whatever you drink, whatever you do, do all for the
glory of God. So when you are making these ethical decisions, we are asking ourselves, is
God shining here? Can God be seen here? That’s the notion of His glory, isn’t
it? Is this to the glory of God or am I trying to get away with something? With those two notions -- whatsoever
is not of faith is sin and whatever we do, do it to the glory of God -- let’s talk
for just a second about healthy habits. I can say healthy habits and we are probably ok
with that. Probably I will not be accused of legalism if I say it is a good idea to have
your quiet time. What is a quiet time if it is not a time we put God first in our lives on
a daily basis. We meet with Him. We open His Word and we are sensitive to what He might
say to us there. We pray to Him and He certainly is sensitive to what we are saying to
Him. We are starting our day with God. We teach our children to read your Bible, pray
every day. It will make you grow, grow, grow. That’s good stuff. Is that not simply a
habit that is a good one? Doesn’t it reflect that commandment, “You shall have
no other gods besides Me?” Isn’t there a way of doing that? Doesn’t the second commandment
talk about no graven images? Do not worship created stuff. Doesn’t it have something
to do with the first as well, and the fact that we will meet with God. We will not bow to
an idol or be distracted by something created. We will meet with the God of heaven. We can’t
see Him but we know He is there. We will meet with Him. We will express our devotions to
Him. We will be accountable to His people and we understand that is part of what it is to
be a believer. Is that legalism? No, it is not. It is a natural habit that is a fruit of a
relationship with the living God. Legalism is when we do as the Pharisees and the rabbis,
we come up with 1500 ways to keep the Sabbath and if you break just one, you are in
trouble. That is legalism. Cultivating healthy habits in light of
a relationship with the living God, if that is confused with legalism, then I would
question an individual’s grasp of Scripture. How about the third commandment, don’t
take the name of the Lord your God in vain. Be careful with the sanctity of speech. Some
of us, when we become Christians, need to see some changes in our speech. Is that
legalistic? I think not. I think your speech, as the apostle Paul says, is to be seasoned
with grace because that is how God is and if He lives inside me, His nature will be seen
and heard in the way I speak. How many of us as moms and dads have expressions that we do
not allow in our house? Is that legalistic, or are we just trying to represent the truth
of Scripture in life? How about this business of honoring
parents? That’s the fifth commandment. Isn’t honoring parents really seeing
parents as God’s gift, as God’s blessing. The whole notion of the institution of
family and honoring parents has to do with God’s being the God of authority and His
appointing authority in society, in the family. Children are to see their parents as
put there by God and cultivate an attitude of submission and obedience to parents as to
God. Is that bad? If you are a kid, you may chafe against that, but it is true. When
children are older and are released by their parents and have their own household, is it
wrong to call up mom or dad and say, “What do you think,” and to defer to wisdom
and experience in a loving relationship that has been cultivated over time. Is that
legalism? No. It is just a good habit, a good idea. It is a reflection of a loving
relationship. That is honoring parents. Thou shall not kill. That word means
murder. But the converse of the commandment is every bit as true and it is said in a
positive way elsewhere in Scripture. That is do good to people and honor life because that
is how God is. That is what God does. So we look for opportunities to love. If we have
heart issues and if we struggle with hatred and bitterness, we turn to Jesus and say,
“I don’t like that. Would you take that away. Would you help me deal with it.”
We are sensitive to it and we grow in it. That is not legalism. That is just growth in
relationship. Thou shall not steal. It does not only
mean don’t take things that are not yours. It has everything to do with notions of
ownership and stewardship. We do not take things because they are not ours. They aren’t
ours because they are God’s. To steal is an affront to the God who owns the cattle on
a thousand hills, whether we are rustling or not. They are His and for us to make an
illegitimate claim of ownership is theft and an affront to a holy God. Not only do we
avoid theft, but we look for ways of managing well and smartly and being resourceful and
efficient with that to which he has entrusted us. That is not legalism. That is just what
we do as good stewards. Commandment number eight -- don’t
commit adultery. There’s far more here than just don’t step out. It has to do
with respect for other people. It has to do with respect for the notion of purity. It has
to do with cultivating long-term, loving relationships based on trust. It has to do with
control of where we put our feet and where we put our eyes. If that control is legalism, I
am reading the wrong Bible. It is a fruit of a relationship. It is as it should be. It is
as it would be if Jesus is doing the living and indeed, through us, He is. Do not bear false witness. In other
words, do not lie. Strive to speak truth to the building up and enlightenment of others,
not to their destruction. Do not covet. Be satisfied with what
God has given, not grasping. Remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy. Remember God’s day, the Lord’s day as a gift. It is a gift of rest from livelihood. Remember to celebrate His salvation with His people. Remember to look forward to glory and eternal rest on that day. Remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy. "Scripture
taken from the NEW AMERICAN STANDARD BIBLE®, Jim Carlson 2006, Lone Rock Bible Church, Stevensville Montana, USA |