I absolutely love this quote from Tolkien. (I stole it from the Oxford Inklings blog, but it’s worth throwing in the scrapbook.)
When asked by a journalist what made him “tick” he answered:
“I don’t tick. I am not a machine. (If I did tick, I should have no views on it, and you had better ask the winder.) My work did not ‘evolve’ into a serious work. It started like that. The so-called ‘children’s story’ [The Hobbit] was a fragment, torn out of an already existing mythology. In so far as it was dressed up as ‘for children’, in style or manner, I regret it. So do the children. I am a philologist, and all my work is philological. I avoid hobbies because I am a very serious person and cannot distinguish between private amusement and duty. I am affable, but unsociable. I only work for private amusement, since I find my duties privately amusing.” ‘
While researching the history and theology behind the Sabbath, I came across a LOT of posts and articles like this one. I’m not going to link to it – just give a few excerpts. This sort of thing is very common. I’ve heard it before many times.
“In my own life, I try to take at least two walks each day – these short 45 minute Sabbaths refresh, renew, and revitalize; they inspire me with new ideas and enable me to respond compassionately to the people around me. Time spent in Sabbath comes back to me in greater creativity, inspiration, and compassion. I try to take more extended Sabbaths – an afternoon or a day apart, without internet or working, on a regular basis. On Sundays, I try to study and spend time with my family rather than do business tasks.
Martin Luther is reputed to have noted, “I have so much to do today that I need to spend extra time in prayer.”
Today, make a commitment to a few minutes of Sabbath – a time of prayer and meditation, a walk, a conversation with a friend, devotional reading. Time is relative and Sabbath opens us to spacious living, and rest that rejuvenates.”
Can you feel the weight of the law crushing down on you? Nice suggestion – take a 45 minute walk each day to revitalize? What if you’re a single mom? (Heck, what if you’re a married mom?). That Martin Luther quote gets pulled out ALL THE TIME to try to exhort people to pray more. What it really does is just make you feel like a loser. (Unnecessarily so.) Finally, there is a plea to “make a commitment” to get your act together by observing the Sabbath more. Automatic fail. Bleh.
No grace to be found in one word of this ridiculous prescriptive preaching. The author probably thinks he’s being really helpful and biblical too. It’s all good advice, but no good news. This sort of thing doesn’t help anyone.
I hear a lot of people criticize the “institutional church” in various ways. Talk about an easy target! Nonetheless, one of the things that is often implied is that the contemporary church service is a silly later invention with little or no relation to what the apostles actually did. While we have little evidence of what the first century church looked like exactly (home gatherings with meals are most likely), I was surprised to find this pretty detailed account that isn’t much older.
On the day called Sunday, all who live in cities or in the country gather together to one place, and the memoirs of the apostles or the writings of the prophets are read, as long as time permits; then, when the reader has ceased, the president verbally instructs, and exhorts to the imitation of these good things. Then we all rise together and pray, and, as we before said, when our prayer is ended, bread and wine and water are brought, and the president in like manner offers prayers and thanksgivings, according to his ability, and the people assent, saying Amen; and there is a distribution to each, and a participation of that over which thanks have been given, and to those who are absent a portion is sent by the deacons. And they who are well to do, and willing, give what each thinks fit; and what is collected is deposited with the president, who succours the orphans and widows and those who, through sickness or any other cause, are in want, and those who are in bonds and the strangers sojourning among us, and in a word takes care of all who are in need.
-Justin Martyr, First Apology 67
So, let’s see:
They meet on Sunday as long or as short as time permits
They read some from the Old Testament (prophets)
They read some from the New Testament (apostles)
The leader gives a teaching and exhortation (sermon)
They all stand up and pray
They distribute bread and wine, then pray and eat
They take up an offering and those “well to do” give some.
Then they are done.
(They probably sing somewhere in there, but it’s not mentioned in this account)
Later that day, the deacons distribute food and money to the poor or absent in the congregation.
So there we go. From AD 150, that looks shockingly like a pretty vanilla church service. There would have been people in the congregation whose parents knew the apostles personally – only one generation removed. Did they stand up and say, “This liturgy and order of service is a bunch of trash! Let’s get back to what Jesus taught us!” No, they didn’t say that. Instead, this is what they actually established. Maybe it’s not such a bad idea.
I’m appealing to history here to argue for the legitimacy of traditional Christian worship gatherings, though I don’t really have any problem with most “alt worship” ideas either.
“All who rely on observing the law are under a curse.”
Is this at odds with so much of what the psalmist says? What about, for example:
With my lips I declare all the rules of your mouth. In the way of your testimonies I delight as much as in all riches.
Psalm 119:13-14 (ESV)
The key word there is “relying”.
The trick here is what are you relying on the law for? Anything? If you are relying on your observance of the law to save you, to redeem you from death, then indeed, you are under a curse.
“Blessed is the man who walks not in the counsel of the wicked, etc.” from Psalm 1. What does he do? His delight is in the law of the Lord, and on his law he meditates day and night.
This must be an OBSERVANCE of the law of sorts. But if he is RELYING on this to save his life, then he is under a curse – an impossible burden on his back that he cannot lift. Observing the whole law will crush you. It is as heavy as the weight of the entire earth. For the earth to hold you to the ground, it needs to have a certain mass and gravity. The only way to exert this is by being impossibly large and crushing. The law describes nature as the Lord created it. Jesus saves us from the death that naturally occurs to us due to our corruption and rebellion.
The Sabbath rest in time and space is naturally healthy to our bodies, the environment, and society. But it cannot save us. To put a burden on people to observe the Sabbath is to put a heavy weight upon their neck that they cannot bear. They may be able to bear it, on the surface, while reaping some benefits, but this is only cosmetic. The only one who has done the law justice is the judge himself, Jesus Christ. The fascinating thing about Christ is that we are told he is our judge, AND our intercessor. What charm do you use to ward off the wrath of God? You’re works? You’re prayers? You’re petitions to the saints?
Michael Card, when singing about Christ as Jubilee, describes what it it will be like, “To look into your judges face and see your savior there.” Jesus Christ is the only thing that can satisfy the law – the whole shmere. And he did. His life on earth is the fullfillment of the Sabbath. It is a perfect sabbath. We rest in Christ because the burden has been lifted. Before that, how could we really rest?
Can you really rest on a Saturday if the roof on the house is leaking? When there is water dripping on your bed? The furnace is broken and the pipes in the bathroom has frozen hard? Can you just chill out and take it easy? That is no rest. The same is true of our sinful lives. Can we rest when we have been nasty and hateful to our family members in recent memory? We still feel dirty – and angry – about our lies and lust, even if not all of it is immediately obvious to outside observers. Can you rest in this? No. But with Christ, you can. He IS the jubilee. Your bank account is empty and your credit card maxed out on raucous living, just like that of the Prodigal son. But you get it all back – you are returned to your place of sonship in the house of God. This is a real Sabbath rest. The Grace of Jesus Christ is the sole enabler of this. He IS the real Sabbath. Like nearly everything we see in God’s relation to OT Israel, Jesus is the fulfillment. The old was a shadow – a signpost pointing to the new. The new is here.
Now, I would really like to bring this all back around to Jesus.
I think to understand what Sabbath was really about in the first place; we need to connect it back to the Jubilee, which provides a much clearer connection to Christ.
When Jesus first began his ministry, he stood up and read something very significant. We find this in Luke 2:16 and onward:
And he came to Nazareth, where he had been brought up. And as was his custom, he went to the synagogue on the Sabbath day, and he stood up to read. And the scroll of the prophet Isaiah was given to him. He unrolled the scroll and found the place where it was written,
“The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,
because he has anointed me
to proclaim good news to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim liberty to the captives
and recovering of sight to the blind,
to set at liberty those who are oppressed,
to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”
And he rolled up the scroll and gave it back to the attendant and sat down. And the eyes of all in the synagogue were fixed on him. And he began to say to them, “Today this Scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.”
(Luke 4:16-21 ESV)
“To proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.” That’s the year of Jubilee. (Lots of theologians agree that that is what he is talking about there. It’s probably listed as a cross-reference to the Jubilee laws in Leviticus 25 if you have a study bible.) Jesus picked just this passage and said, “Today this Scripture is FULFILLED in your hearing.”
What he is saying is, “I AM the Sabbath. I AM the year of Jubilee. The slaves being set free? The debts cancelled? That was just a shadow, but not anymore. I have arrived! The rest, the seventh day is HERE right now, in the flesh, right in front of your face. I’m it.”
New Testament scholar N.T. Wright has this to say about how Jesus handled the Sabbath:
“So why would Jesus so pointedly cut a swath through this great and God-given institution? The only explanation which will do – but it will do very well indeed – is that Jesus believed he was inaugurating the new age toward which the entire Sabbath institution had been pointing. He had come to announce and enact the Jubilee of Jubilees, the Sabbath of Sabbaths, the time when God’s purposes and human life would come together at last.”
-N.T. Wright, Scripture and the Authority of God, p.180?
This is what Jesus was talking about when he announces:
“The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand.”
(Mark 1:15 ESV)
To continue to focus on the Sabbath is to step backwards and look at the signposts that point to Jesus instead of looking at Jesus himself. His amazing resurrection is the only thing that enables us to celebrate the “rest” in the first place.
Before Christ, how could we really rest? We were commanded to, but the world was broken and we were lost in the mire of our sin and its curse.
Imagine, could you really rest on a Saturday if the roof on the house was leaking? Could you sleep in if there was water dripping on your bed? What if the furnace was broken and the pipes in the bathroom had frozen hard? Could you just chill out and take it easy? That is no rest! The same is true of our sinful lives. Can we rest when we have been nasty and hateful to our family members in recent memory? We still feel dirty – and angry – about our lies and lust, even if not all of it is immediately obvious to outside observers. Can you rest in this? No. But with Christ, you can.
He IS the jubilee. Your bank account is empty and your credit card maxed out on raucous living, just like that of the Prodigal son. But you get it all back – you are returned to your place of sonship in the house of God. This is a real Sabbath rest. The Grace of Jesus Christ is the sole ENABLER of this, and he prefaces it with no burdensome prerequisites. He, Jesus, IS the real Sabbat. Like nearly everything we see in God’s relation to OT Israel, Jesus is the fulfillment. The old was a shadow – a signpost pointing to the new. The new is here.
Let’s pray.
Thank you God, for providing us with this marvelous rest, even yourself. Dear Jesus, let us know freedom from the burden of sin and the demands of those around us. Grant us that rest you have won for us. Amen.
I want to take a moment and perhaps cut the Pharisees a little slack. When we, as Protestants read the Bible, we often project our own issues back on to what we are reading. The reformers were zealous in preaching salvation by faith alone, as opposed to “works righteousness”. That is good. But when we see everything through that lens, we can misinterpret what other people are trying to say. We often want to imagine that the Pharisees were legalists trying to “work their way to heaven” instead of just trusting Yahweh. We imagine that if they are advocating adherence to a law, it MUST be because they deny justification by faith. But that is projecting a reformation-era controversy back on the first century. Relaying on the law to save them may have been a serious problem, but some wise historians have suggested that this may not have been forefront in the Pharisees mind.
Remember that Israel was a conquered land, ruled by the Romans. They’re devotion to God was suppressed. They were surrounded by idol-worshipping pagans sacrificing to Zeus and you-name-it every day of the week! Keeping the Sabbath and eating Kosher food was very important to them as a badge of national identity. It was one of the few ways they could say, “Hey! We’re different! We are our own people! We are NOT like you pagans.” These traditions kept them glued together as a people in an environment where many other cultures disappeared or were simply absorbed into the empire. Keeping the Sabbath, for them, was more than obeying a law that God gave them a long time ago; it was a huge part of asserting themselves as Jews. It gave their life meaning.
Are we like them? Do we have a badge of Christian identity that makes us stand out in our very secular culture? Wearing a beard or a head covering? You still find that in some places. No drinking beer and no 2-piece bathing suits? Maybe if you grew up Baptist, like I did. Those may have meant something in America 50 years ago, but they are probably failed or false distinctions today. Displaying an American flag? That doesn’t actually have anything to do with God. How does anyone know we are Christians? No divorce? No ridiculous consumer debt? How on earth do we stick together and distinguish ourselves from the surrounding culture? I don’t really have an answer. The Jews and the Pharisees, subdued by a foreign power, were grasping for a way to do that. Observing the Sabbath strictly became that mark. Perhaps showing up to sing and eat bread and wine on Sunday is still our best bet.
Actually, later in his gospel account, the one we are studying this year, John tells us what Jesus said our badge would be:
By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.”
(John 13:35 ESV)
They will know we are Christians, not by our clothes or food or drink or rituals, or wealth or poverty, or politics (though those things are necessary and DO matter), but our defining, obvious characteristic is to be our love for on another.
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Note: For an insightful look at the Jewish attitude toward the Sabbath during Jesus’ time, see N.T. Wright, Jesus and the Victory of God, especially pages 387-396.
Though the details about the Sabbath aren’t outlined until the Law of Moses in the book of Exodus, we see it show up very early on in scripture, in Genesis chapter 2.
Thus the heavens and the earth were finished, and all the host of them. 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. 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.
(Genesis 2:1-3 ESV)
So after God created the heavens, earth, and everything in it, he rested. Whether this was a 24-hour day or some other period of time doesn’t matter. This period of rest is something instituted from the dawn of the earth. This is the origin of the week. Notice that in this verse there is nothing prescriptive. There isn’t a command to Adam build a calendar and watch it carefully. We are just told that God rested and that he made the day “holy” or sanctified – set aside as special. We aren’t told that God rested every 7th day from then on or anything of the sort. Just that for that one day, he rested. He stopped creating things. God didn’t rest because his muscles were tired. He doesn’t have muscles (though Jesus did.) Adam needed sleep. God doesn’t. His imagination and power are limitless.
Abraham
Later in Genesis, we have Abraham. Nowhere do we have any explicit evidence that he observed any sort of Sabbath rest. He might have and some people conjecture that he did, but it apparently wasn’t important enough to mention. The same goes for Abraham’s descendants Isaac, Jacob, and the other early patriarchs.
Early Israel: Egypt
When the nation of Israel is in slavery in Egypt, Moses asked Pharaoh to give them a few days off to go and worship God in the desert.
But Pharaoh said, “Who is the LORD, that I should obey his voice and let Israel go? I do not know the LORD, and moreover, I will not let Israel go.” Then they said, “The God of the Hebrews has met with us. Please let us go a three days’ journey into the wilderness that we may sacrifice to the LORD our God, lest he fall upon us with pestilence or with the sword.” But the king of Egypt said to them, “Moses and Aaron, why do you take the people away from their work? Get back to your burdens.”
(Exodus 5:2-4 ESV)
Pharaoh’s reply is interesting. From his perspective, taking days off was bad for the economy. Judging by his reply to Moses here, he would not have been thrilled about a moratorium on brick-laying every seven days. “Something like that would kill GDP! Come on Moses, money never sleeps!”
Law of Moses
After Israel escapes from Egypt, the Lord gives Moses the law on Mt. Sinai. The Ten Commandments are a summary of this law. We already saw that #4 requires that we keep the Sabbath day holy.
The actual verse is this:
“Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy. Six days you shall labor, and do all your work, 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. 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.
(Exodus 20:8-11 ESV)
Later Israel is given a lot more details about what this entails:
Whoever does any work on it shall be put to death. You shall kindle no fire in all your dwelling places on the Sabbath day.”
(Exodus 35:2-3 ESV)
But wait, there is more! It turns out Sabbath isn’t just a day of the week. I can be a year!
“Speak to the people of Israel and say to them, When you come into the land that I give you, the land shall keep a Sabbath to the LORD. For six years you shall sow your field, and for six years you shall prune your vineyard and gather in its fruits, but in the seventh year there shall be a Sabbath of solemn rest for the land, a Sabbath to the LORD. You shall not sow your field or prune your vineyard.
(Leviticus 25:2-4 ESV)
This is a very good law. Wise farmers know that they need to put their fields in fallow every few years so that nature can restore the nutrients to the soil. Trying to squeeze every last drop of productivity out of the environment has damaging consequences. The same goes for employers trying to squeeze ever last drop of productivity out of their workers by demanding that they work Saturday, Sunday, overtime, etc. This sort of abuse always backfires. Here we have explicit commands from God against it. The Law of Moses enforced economic moderation. Very prudent, and over 3500 years old too.
But wait, there’s even more! Every 50 years (seven times seven plus one) there was a “super Sabbath” called the year of Jubilee. During this year, slaves were automatically freed, debts were forgiven, land was returned to the original owners, and others sorts of redemption occurred. I could read you the verses here from the Old Testament, but the passages are pretty long and detailed. The point is that the observance of “Sabbath” was a big idea that extended to many things besides taking a day off your day job.
I know people in this room who were personally devastated when the home mortgage bubble burst a few years ago. I have some older coworkers at my office who were supposed to be retired by now, but they lost most of their savings when the banks and stock markets tanked in 2008. Can you imagine what the mortgage industry would look like if everyone’s debts were forgiven every 50 years? Economists today say that things like the year of Jubilee are silly and obviously can’t apply to our modern society. All of God’s old commands to Israel had a purpose though. Perhaps he knows something we don’t?
So for centuries, the Jews observed the Sabbath (or at least the more devout ones tried to). Things changed though after they were carried into exile in Babylon and returned a couple generations later.
2nd Temple Judaism, the time of Jesus
This brings us to the time in history known as “Second Temple Judaism”, the time into which Jesus Christ was born. The Jews were back in Israel, the temple had been rebuilt but they were no longer in control of the government. They were a conquered people, a small province of the empire of Rome. Because of this, there were huge parts of the law that they were no longer able to enforce. Much of their daily laws were subject to the secular powers. Think about the laws against worshipping false God’s and the punishments? The moral restrictions on sleeping around or the requirements to be an honest businessman? The local pagan governor Herod or the Roman prefect Pilate didn’t care about those. They only let the Jewish leaders enforce some of the Old Testament law as a way of keeping the natives settled down.
Because the people of God were constrained, the Pharisees, teachers and experts in God’s law, took certain parts of law and blew them up like a balloon – adding hundreds of pages of “official” commentary on how to observe the rules just right. A modern translation of these laws for Orthodox Jews who want to continue in the Pharisees’ tradition includes thousands of these guidelines.
Jesus was not impressed. He was frequently critical of their actions as the self-ordained ritual police. At the same time, many of the Pharisees were very interested in Jesus and would follow him around. He sure did seem like a prophet from God sometimes, they just weren’t quite sure what to do with him.
This pronouncement from Jesus in Mark 2:27 is revealing and key to our discussion:
And he said to them, “The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath.
(Mark 2:27 ESV)
Back to why God established the Sabbath rest. Is it because he gets tired? Of course not. But we do. We need rest to be healthy. He knows this. He’s the one who designed our minds and bodies. In a way, to NOT observe Sabbath (in some sense) is ultimately to abuse yourself. It’s for us. God doesn’t need our worship on that day either to enlarge his Godness.
As far as following Jesus goes, note what is missing from this summary of the law that the apostle Paul gives in Romans 13.
For the commandments, “You shall not commit adultery, You shall not murder, You shall not steal, You shall not covet,” and any other commandment, are summed up in this word: “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” Love does no wrong to a neighbor; therefore love is the fulfilling of the law.
(Romans 13:9-10 ESV)
But I guess those are laws dealing with loving your neighbor. How about something more direct?
Therefore let no one pass judgment on you in questions of food and drink, or with regard to a festival or a new moon or a Sabbath. These are a shadow of the things to come, but the substance belongs to Christ.
(Colossians 2:16-17 ESV)
So why is the old Sabbath notion being tossed? The answer I think lies in Jesus himself. More on that later.
Let’s move on to how the early church, the first Christians handled this. For the first few years, the church was made up almost entirely of Jewish people! Acts talks about them meeting in the synagogues together even after they became Christ’s disciples. I don’t think there is any reason to assume that they wouldn’t have continued to be very Jewish, at least culturally. We know they still had their baby boys circumcised, and only ate kosher food. It’s unlikely that their Sabbath observance changed much, especially if they lived in or around Israel.
A few years later though, gentiles (that’s the rest of us) started to be saved through the work of Paul and other missionaries. Some of the Jewish Christians were insisting that the new converts from Greece and Rome should also be circumcised and probably should lay off the bacon too. As is recorded in the New Testament, Paul was really serious about squashing these ideas from the so-called “Judaizes”. The old ceremonial laws are NOT important he insists. Jesus has fulfilled them. And Paul was trained as a Pharisee. He knew what he was talking about.
What we do find is that Sunday began to take on a new significance. Since that was the day that Jesus rose from the dead, a lot of early church leaders apparently thought it was the new best day to get together for corporate worship.
Ignatius of Antioch, an early church leader wrote this in about 100 AD. That’s only one generation removed from the apostles:
“Those who were brought up in the ancient order of things have come to the possession of a new hope, no longer observing the Sabbath, but living in the observance of the Lord’s Day, on which our life has sprung up again by Him and by His death”
(Letter to the Magnesians 9.1).
Justin Martyr, another early church father, elaborates on this in 150 AD.
“Sunday is the day on which we all hold our common assembly, because it is the first day on which God, having wrought a change in the darkness and matter, made the world; and Jesus Christ our Savior on the same day rose from the dead. For He was crucified on the day before that of Saturn (Saturday); and on the day after that of Saturn, which is the day of the Sun, having appeared to His apostles and disciples”
And this is why MOST Christians (including us here) have been meeting together on Sundays for the past two thousand years.
Later, for better or worse, the church became more institutionalized. In the year 321 Emperor Constantine officially gave Sunday a bit of Sabbath flavor:
“On the venerable day of the Sun let the magistrates and people residing in cities rest, and let all workshops be closed.”
(From the “Sunday” edict of 321)
So now, in the Roman Catholic Church, which for the next 1200 years or so is ALL Christians, at least in the west, Sunday became not just a day of gathering for worship, but was also a government enforced day of rest – a “Sabbat” of a sort.
The bulk of the secular world today still observes this tradition, to some degree. All government offices and banks are closed on Sunday across the whole earth! In America though, most retail stores are open. Modernism has eroded this healthy Sabbath-esque institution of rest.
There has been some confusion as to whether Christians “moved” the Sabbath to Sunday. No, rather they (at least the non Jewish ones) ignored the Sabbath (following Jesus’ example and Paul’s teaching), but then Sunday took on some of the same characteristics. Over the centuries though, “The Lord’s Day” the term for Sunday, and “Sabbath” became largely interchangeable.
During the protestant reformation, many of the leaders, including Martin Luther and John Calvin were very insistent that our faith in the saving work of Jesus Christ was the only really important element in Christianity. In the view of many of the reformers and descendants, we are in no way bound by the Law of Moses anymore. Having Sunday off is a convenient time to rest and also gather to worship. It’s good and practical.
So this history of “what do people who follow the Triune God do on the weekend” is our history here. You are participating in the continuation of it right now.
There have been a few dissenting voices over the years. I’ll mention a few of them now.
The early Puritans that came to colonize America – some of them are your ancestors – were very zealous about not working on The Lord’s Day. They made many local and regional laws restricting what sort of work could be done on Sundays. Some of this tradition can still be observed if you travel to certain parts back east. Some towns still virtually shut down on Sunday. This is from that early Puritan heritage.
Growing up, I attended a 7th-day Adventist elementary school so I had a lot of friends that went to church on Saturday. As their name suggests, this is a Christian denomination that has decided that worshipping together on Saturday (not Sunday) is really important. This has turned out to be pretty handy, as they will usually let another church in town borrow their building the following day.
Ellen G. White, one of the founders of the seventh-day Adventists had this to say:
The Sabbath will be the great test of loyalty. The observance of the false Sabbath in compliance with the law of the state, contrary to the fourth commandment, will be an avowal of allegiance to a power that is in opposition to God, the keeping of the true Sabbath, in obedience to God’s law, is an evidence of loyalty to the Creator. While one class, by accepting the sign of submission to earthly powers, receive the mark of the beast, the other choosing the token of allegiance to divine authority, receive the seal of God. (Ellen G. White, The Great Controversy, 1884).
You catch that? The “Mark of the beast” mentioned in Revelation is going to church on Sunday. So that’s all of us here I guess. Well, that was almost a hundred and fifty years ago and they’ve toned down their rhetoric a lot since, so I don’t want to give them a hard time.
At an independent Bible church, lay preaching is about par for the course. We are spending the year going through the gospel of John in pretty small increments and today it was my turn. I’ve edited the text of it here slightly into four posts with maybe some supplemental material following. I enjoyed preparing this one and ended up learning quite a bit. I was excited to discover that even a topic so “law heavy” in most discourses can be shown to point so brightly to grace.
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The Text
Passage – John 5:1-18
After this there was a feast of the Jews, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem.
Now there is in Jerusalem by the Sheep Gate a pool, in Aramaic called Bethesda, which has five roofed colonnades. In these lay a multitude of invalids—blind, lame, and paralyzed. One man was there who had been an invalid for thirty-eight years. When Jesus saw him lying there and knew that he had already been there a long time, he said to him, “Do you want to be healed?” The sick man answered him, “Sir, I have no one to put me into the pool when the water is stirred up, and while I am going another steps down before me.” Jesus said to him, “Get up, take up your bed, and walk.” And at once the man was healed, and he took up his bed and walked.
Now that day was the Sabbath. So the Jews said to the man who had been healed, “It is the Sabbath, and it is not lawful for you to take up your bed.” But he answered them, “The man who healed me, that man said to me, ‘Take up your bed, and walk.’” They asked him, “Who is the man who said to you, ‘Take up your bed and walk’?” Now the man who had been healed did not know who it was, for Jesus had withdrawn, as there was a crowd in the place. Afterward Jesus found him in the temple and said to him, “See, you are well! Sin no more, that nothing worse may happen to you.” The man went away and told the Jews that it was Jesus who had healed him. And this was why the Jews were persecuting Jesus, because he was doing these things on the Sabbath. But Jesus answered them, “My Father is working until now, and I am working.”
This was why the Jews were seeking all the more to kill him, because not only was he breaking the Sabbath, but he was even calling God his own Father, making himself equal with God.
Prayer
Lord, open our ears and enlighten our minds to understand this event in Jesus’ life. Soften our hearts and teach us to love your law and appreciate your grace even more as we study this word you have given us. Amen.
What are we going to talk about and why?
There are several things in this passage that we could talk about. The pool of Bethesda is kind of interesting since it has a back-story involving angels. Instead though, we’re going to look at the main reason John included this in his book, which was to highlight that Jesus was healing on the Sabbath.
Jesus, by simply opening his mouth and speaking the command, makes this crippled man’s body whole again. He doesn’t have to perform surgery or cast out any demons, put mud on his eyes, or even pray to the father.
Jesus often went out of his way not to draw attention to himself. In this story, he appears to have left soon after, before the man could figure out who he was. Later the Pharisees asked, “Wow, you can walk now? What happened to you?” But when he tells them what happened, they immediately become upset that the healing occurred on the Sabbath. Later, they confront Jesus about it and he brushes them off saying, “My Father is always working, and so am I.”
We are told that this is why they were seeking to kill him. Later, when Jesus is on trial, they try to portray him as some kind of anti-Roman revolutionary. They had to do this because the Romans didn’t care a bit about their religious ideas. The real reason for their hate (a seed that, when planted and watered grows into murder) was that Jesus was saying he was equal with the Father because he could ignore the Sabbath laws, with God’s blessing no less.
So today, I’m going to talk about the Sabbath, clear up what it is and what it isn’t; look through scripture and see what it’s origins are; provide a brief history or timeline about what Christians have done about it over the years, up to what we here (all you sitting in this room!) at Bridge Bible do about it today; and why. We’ll also take another look back at the Pharisees and Jesus and try to understand why it was such a big deal to them. It might provide some clues to how we should live today in an increasingly hostile public square.
Why talk about the Sabbath? Well, it happens every seven days! That’s a pretty common occurrence. What are you going to do about it? What to do about the Sabbath has regularly been a controversial topic in Christianity. After Baptism and the Lord’s Supper, observing it seems to be a pretty obvious “outward sign” of our religious devotion. Serving God isn’t something that just happens inside your head. (That’s called Gnosticism.) It includes what you do with your body in space and time.
Jesus was baptized and Jesus ate the bread and wine, but he didn’t observe the Sabbath, at least, not in a way anyone would recognize. In fact, Jesus made some incredible claims about being Lord of the Sabbath. Does this mean he just tossed it out the window? This is what I’ll be talking about today.
Definition, What is and isn’t the Sabbath?
If you haven’t studied the bible a lot (and that’s OK! Some of you here may be new to faith in Jesus Christ. Some of us have been reading it and hearing about it since we were children, but that can also backfire and make it harder to pay attention to parts of it anymore.) Anyway, if you haven’t studied the bible, especially the Old Testament much, I can’t blame you if you think that the “Sabbath” is simply the day you go to church. God wants us to worship him right? And he wants us to get together as a group to worship him on a pretty regular basis (say, once a week) and the day everyone picks to do that is the Sabbath. So “keeping the Sabbath” pretty much just means going to church every Sunday. If you decide to sleep in or just watch TV, or whatever, then you’re a Sabbath breaker! Get your rear out of bed and get to church! It’s in the 10 commandments!
The Sabbath is actually something entirely different and in fact, doesn’t really have anything to do with when we get together as a group to worship God. Now, it later took on some of those characteristics, but to nearly everyone we read about in the Bible, including to all of the disciples that followed Jesus around, it meant something pretty different. To the Pharisees it meant even more and to Jesus it meant – nothing? We’ll see.
The word “Sabbath” is from the Hebrew word “Sabbat”, which means, “to rest”. This is why, when someone takes a “sabbatical”, they are taking some time off to rest. In some languages, it has become the word for the number seven.
Does this not further confirm Mark Knoffler’s place as one of the greatest musicians, songwriters, and guitarists of our time? (Not to mention most underrated).
