Grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ (2 Co 1:2). Amen.
Do you have a day on the calendar that is significant? One that stands out or sticks out in your mind? It could be on a national level. Last week we commemorated Memorial Day. It might be on a personal note. We celebrate a birthday.
For the Jews, it was not once every year. But once every week. The Sabbath Day.
It is just a loan word from Hebrew. Sabbath. We take the letters from the original and replace them with English ones. At least the corresponding sounds. There are some facts that are probably familiar.
The Sabbath day was the 7th day of the week (Dt 5:14). That translates to Saturday. It was a special day. As Moses reminded the people of Israel: “Observe the Sabbath day by keeping it holy” (Dt 5:12). It was to be set apart from and separate from the other 6 days. The Israelites were to guard that carefully like we do with anniversaries when they come around. We refer to it as the Third Commandment.
“Sabbath” signifies rest. There were two aspects to that.
1) Physical rest: “On it you shall not do any work, neither you, nor your son or daughter, nor your manservant or maidservant, nor your ox, your donkey or any of your animals, nor the alien within your gates, so that your manservant and maidservant may rest, as you do” (Dt 5:13). In sense, they were to unplug from work as some suggest that we do with our phones. But that is just sage advice. We might do well to try it. This wasn’t a suggestion. The Lord who created our bodies knows that they can’t work all the time or around the clock.
So far so good. Jesus’ enemies, the Pharisees, would have no problem with that description, or better, definition. That wasn’t the problem. It was the application of the second part.
2) Spiritual rest: But it was more than just God being understanding. It was a day for worship—to reflect on the rest that the promised Messiah would one day bring, rest from a guilty conscience—the forgiveness of sins.
And it wasn’t just a matter of jealousy. There was that. The Pharisees were not excited when the people listened to and learned from Jesus. But it was also a question of philosophy. The Pharisees had altered or adapted God’s commands over the years. They had their own “What does this mean?” ME! It is on me and about me. The Third Commandment, as well as the others, was a way to amaze God. “Look at what I am doing.” They viewed it as part of their elaborate rules and intricate regulations to be kept to earn salvation by themselves. For example, they added what could and couldn’t be done on that day—like how far one could walk during those twenty-four hours (Acts 1:12).
Or what theoretically constituted “work.” So in their effort to trap Jesus, they finally had an airtight case against him. What lawyer wouldn’t want a slam dunk? And here it was: “One Sabbath Jesus was going through the grainfields, and as his disciples walked along, they began to pick some heads of grain” (Mk 2:23). Those men were not stealing. That was permitted in the Old Testament (Dt 23:25). You could go into your neighbor’s field and get some wheat (as long as you weren’t taking a sickle to it). We might think along the lines of a snack. It wasn’t as if you were sneaking in the middle of the night and taking every single tomato from the garden next door.
“The Pharisees said to him, ‘Look, why are they doing what is unlawful on the Sabbath?’” (Mk 2:24). They were shocked by what they witnessed. What made it improper was it went against their tradition, their augmentations or attachments of the Sabbath Day. Jesus’ disciples were breaking rabbinic code. Harvesting—rubbing the grain in their hands to remove the chaff before chewing the kernels (Lk 6:1)—was working. And Jesus didn’t stop them. What kind of a teacher was he?
It is almost as if Mark puts us at the scene of the action as Jesus recalls an account that they were certainly acquainted with. “Have you never read what David did when he and his companions were hungry and in need?” (Mk 2:25). Of course they had.
It might require a bit of refreshing for us. It happened once when King Saul was chasing after David to kill him (1 Sa 21:1-6). Jesus relates the incident: “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” (Mk 2:26). Every week 12 loaves of bread, representing the 12 tribes of Israel, were placed on the golden table inside the holy place of the Tabernacle. The priests were the only ones who were to eat the old ones (Le 24:5-9). It was from those that David and company dined out of an emergency. There was no condemnation of him. Human need trumped Ceremonial Law. Mercy always wins (Ho 6:6; Mt 12:7).
Jesus goes on with his instruction. He draws a conclusion: “The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath” (Mk 2:27). The Sabbath Day was for man’s benefit, a gift from God—to serve him, not enslave him, as a break, not a bother. It is not the other way around. God gets nothing out of it. And Jesus can decide. He is emphatic about it: “So the Son of Man is Lord even of the Sabbath” (Mk 2:28).
He is Lord—over all and above all. He has all authority—even when it comes to the Sabbath.
He is the “Son of Man.” That is Jesus’ favorite designation for himself. He identifies with the ones he came to rescue—us, yet at the same time he is God (Da 7:13).
It comes down to the two approaches to how an individual is saved.
1) One attempts to do it all by himself or herself. It comes from inside of us. Like an arrow from me to God.
2) One admits that he or she needs God’s mercy. It comes from outside of us. Like an arrow from God to me.
God did not give us the law so that we could impress him. But to impress on us that we cannot obey it perfectly, completely, or totally (Mt 5:48; Ja 2:10; Ga 3:10). We are not holy as he is (Le 19:2). The Pharisees might not have seen it. We do. And that is why Jesus came.
To keep the law perfectly for us—in our place. He did.
To take our sins willingly on himself—on his cross. He died.
And now he invites us to come to him (Mt 11:28). And we receive refreshment of our weary and worn souls—the elimination of any and every charge against us, from when our minds stray during worship to when we stay away from worship. That is better than air-conditioning on a hot, humid day. That is why we join Paul in stating: “We do not preach ourselves, but Jesus Christ as Lord” (2 Co 4:5). And with the psalmist we sing: “The LORD has done great things for us, and we are filled with joy” (Ps 126:3).
The apostle Paul lumps the Sabbath Day into the category of “a shadow of the things that were to come; the reality, however, is found in Christ” (Col 2:17). It pointed ahead to Jesus as it pictured real rest in him. We no longer look at a silhouette of the Savior when we have him no more than we gaze at a person’s outline on the ground when they are in front of us. We see him clearly.
But that also doesn’t make Sunday the new Sabbath Day. We have the freedom to worship. (Note that I did not say “freedom from worship,” but “freedom to worship.”) We happen to follow the lead of the early Christian church which chose the first day of the week when we worship. It was a reminder of when Jesus exited his tomb emphasizing that his work was sufficient (Ro 4:25).
We can gather around his Word and sacraments any time. As long as we are in them and around them—at church and at home. As a child of God, we delight in that. Or as we call to mind Luther’s explanation of the Third Commandment: “We should fear and love God that we do not despise preaching and his Word, but regard it as holy, and gladly hear and learn it” (Luther’s Catechism, p. 1).
You know other Hebrew words that we bring into English. Hallelujah is “praise the LORD.” It is not so strange that we do it with Sabbath. Rest. The Pharisees wrongly defined the Sabbath day as earning something. Jesus rightly redefined the Sabbath as enjoying everything. It is not requiring, but receiving—the removal of all our guilt through him. We rest in him. We rest easy.
We read from Mark 2:23-28:
23 One Sabbath Jesus was going through the grainfields, and as his disciples walked along, they began to pick some heads of grain.
24 The Pharisees said to him, “Look, why are they doing what is unlawful on the Sabbath?”
25 He answered, “Have you never read what David did when he and his companions were hungry and in need?
26 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.”
27 Then he said to them, “The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath.
28 So the Son of Man is Lord even of the Sabbath.”
May the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all (2 Co 13:14). Amen.
June 3, 2018
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