Keeping the Sabbath

Series on Luke

III The Initiation

B The Authority of His Ministry

6 Over Days

Text: 6:1-11

Introduction

If we tried to calculate which of the ten commandments is broken more it would indeed be difficult. Is it adultery, lying, stealing, or coveting, or is it something else. I suspect that it is not keeping the sabbath. I say that for two reasons. First, the commandment to disappear from public discourse and concern was the fourth or sabbath commandment. I mean we used to have “Blue Laws,” that protected the day, but greed caused them to be challenged and eliminated in society. Secondly, and more importantly, that happened because people never thought this commandment was important. Sinful human judgment commits the error of thinking that the main point in the commandments is not to hurt other people Whom does it hurt if I ignore the sabbath? However, that is a serious error. Sin and breaking the commandments is displeasing to God. What it does to others is important but not the main point. What offends God is sin, and judging from the punishment for sabbath breakers in the Old Testament I would say that sabbath breaking is a very serious offense to God. In Numbers 15:32-36 we find the account of a man breaking the sabbath and God, not Moses, commands that he be stoned, While the Israelites were in the desert, a man was found gathering wood on the Sabbath day. Those who found him gathering wood brought him to Moses and Aaron and the whole assembly, and they kept him in custody, because it was not clear what should be done to him. Then the LORD said to Moses, “The man must die. The whole assembly must stone him outside the camp.” So the assembly took him outside the camp and stoned him to death, as the LORD commanded Moses. Many judgments came upon Israel as a people because they didn’t keep the Sabbaths and we read in Isaiah 58:13 and 14, a promise to a rebellious people who had broken God’s commandments, “If you keep your feet from breaking the Sabbath and from doing as you please on my holy day, if you call the Sabbath a delight and the LORD’s holy day honorable, and if you honor it by not going your own way and not doing as you please or speaking idle words, then you will find your joy in the LORD, and I will cause you to ride on the heights of the land and to feast on the inheritance of your father Jacob.” The mouth of the LORD has spoken. I give you this background so that you can understand the concern of the Pharisees over the breaking of the sabbath, but also because I want us to understand the teaching of the passage which has often been interpreted in a way that brings aid and comfort to those who do not believe that sabbath keeping is important. The sabbath is about re-creation.

I Re-creation through Hospitality

Christians are commanded to be hospitable because God is hospitable. He provides for His creatures. We read in verses 1-5, One Sabbath Jesus was going through the grain-fields, and his disciples began to pick some heads of grain, rub them in their hands and eat the kernels. Some of the Pharisees asked, “Why are you doing what is unlawful on the Sabbath?”Jesus answered them, “Have you never read what David did when he and his companions were hungry? He entered the house of God, and taking the consecrated bread, he ate what is lawful only for priests to eat. And he also gave some to his companions.” Then Jesus said to them, “The Son of Man is Lord of the Sabbath.” When God made man he placed him in Paradise where everything he would need was immediately accessible. The sabbath is a symbol of the future, of paradise restored where no one hungers or thirsts. Only after Adam’s expulsion was the act of providing difficult. Jesus admits that the law was broken by David, but it was only the letter of the law, not the spirit of the law. The sabbath was not intended to force people to go hungry. That is why the Westminster Catechisms which have a very strict view of the sabbath also make clear that works of necessity are permitted on the sabbath. The account of this incident in Mark 2:27 makes clear that providing for needs is not a violation, Then he said to them, “The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath. The aim of the Old Testament law was to prevent unnecessary labor on the sabbath. The point of the sabbath is encouragement and blessing, not privation. The sabbath directs us to the future and Paradise regained. As a very practical example , when we are at home my wife and I never go out to restaurants on the sabbath. However, if we are forced to travel on the sabbath we have no qualms about enjoying God’s hospitality and comfort expressed through a commercial establishment.

II Re-creation through Healing

The Westminster Catechisms also remind us that besides works of necessity, works of mercy are acceptable on the sabbath. It would be a sad thing if all hospitals closed on Sundays. Jesus is operating one in verses 6-10, On another Sabbath he went into the synagogue and was teaching, and a man was there whose right hand was shriveled. The Pharisees and the teachers of the law were looking for a reason to accuse Jesus, so they watched him closely to see if he would heal on the Sabbath. But Jesus knew what they were thinking and said to the man with the shriveled hand, “Get up and stand in front of everyone.” So he got up and stood there. Then Jesus said to them, “I ask you, which is lawful on the Sabbath: to do good or to do evil, to save life or to destroy it?” He looked around at them all, and then said to the man, “Stretch out your hand.” He did so, and his hand was completely restored. Now this is not the only occasion on which such a confrontation occurred. In Luke 13:10-16 we read, On a Sabbath Jesus was teaching in one of the synagogues, and a woman was there who had been crippled by a spirit for eighteen years. She was bent over and could not straighten up at all. When Jesus saw her, he called her forward and said to her, “Woman, you are set free from your infirmity.” Then he put his hands on her, and immediately she straightened up and praised God. Indignant because Jesus had healed on the Sabbath, the synagogue ruler said to the people, “There are six days for work. So come and be healed on those days, not on the Sabbath.” The Lord answered him, “You hypocrites! Doesn’t each of you on the Sabbath untie his ox or donkey from the stall and lead it out to give it water? Then should not this woman, a daughter of Abraham, whom Satan has kept bound for eighteen long years, be set free on the Sabbath day from what bound her?” The point is, of course, that Jesus’ critics showed more mercy to their animals than they did to people. I grow weary of people whose idea of the sabbath is recreation rather than re-creation, and if they can’t have some fun then they are bored. How about showing mercy to others. How about helping others in need.

III Re-creation through Helping

Everything that Jesus teaches us about the Sabbath leads to the conclusion that we should keep it, but we should feel free to practice works of mercy and necessity on that day. Many of the things that Jesus did on the sabbath were considered wrong by the scribes and Pharisees, and so we read in verse 11, But they were furious and began to discuss with one another what they might do to Jesus. Their fury was, in God’s plan, the key to bringing about true re-creation. The help I am pointing to here is not the good works which may be done on the sabbath because they will not bring about the fulfillment of the sabbath vision of the future. We cannot create that utopia apart from Jesus. In Colossians 1:15-20 we read, He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation. For by him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things were created by him and for him. He is before all things, and in him all things hold together. And he is the head of the body, the church; he is the beginning and the firstborn from among the dead, so that in everything he might have the supremacy. For God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in him, and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether things on earth or things in heaven, by making peace through his blood, shed on the cross. Not only did Jesus Christ, the Son of God, create all things, but through His death and resurrection all creation is reconciled. This means that all creation reaches its sabbath rest through the work of Christ. Through His help alone can the eternal sabbath be attained. Through Him alone the curse is removed not only from us, but from the whole creation. This is why Paul writes in Romans 8:22-25, We know that the whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time. Not only so, but we ourselves, who have the first-fruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for our adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies. For in this hope we were saved. But hope that is seen is no hope at all. Who hopes for what he already has? But if we hope for what we do not yet have, we wait for it patiently. As we keep sabbath after sabbath in the spirit of Christ Jesus we are patiently waiting for the ultimate deliverance. This is what the sabbath symbolizes, a new heavens and a new earth wherein righteousness dwells. We need to be reminded every week of our lives that this is our hope.