Then Jesus said to them, “The Son of Man is Lord of the Sabbath.”
Today we will be talking about God's 4th commandment in Exodus 20 of the Ten Commandments. It s reads, “Remember the Sabbath day by keeping it holy. Six days you shall labor and do all your work, 10 but the seventh day is a Sabbath to the LORD your God. On it you shall not do any work, neither you, nor your son or daughter, nor your manservant or maidservant, nor your animals, nor the alien within your gates. For in six days the LORD made the heavens and the earth, the sea, and all that is in them, but he rested on the seventh day. Therefore the LORD blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy.” God gave us the Sabbath for a very good reason. It's not just rest from physical work. It’s because we need the rest that Sabbath gives. Today we will study about why we need Sabbath rest, where to get it, and how to get it.
I. Where do we get Sabbath Rest?
Look verses 2 to 4, “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.” Here Jesus takes an incident from 1 Samuel chapter 21 where David was on the run for his life. He went to the tabernacle and there is a place where the showbread, which is the bread of the presence, it was in the holy place in the tabernacle and was part of the Sabbath worship. Only appointed priests can go there and eat the bread. But David went in and ate the bread. Now here Jesus implied that David was never condemned for eating the bread. God never said in the scriptures that he sinned against God by doing that. Now Jesus is inviting us to think out the implications of this.
So because of what David did, the Sabbath and worship regulations were set aside, but on the other hand no place anywhere in the Bible where the moral law were set aside. There was no event in the bible God that says it’s ok to steal when you are in serious need. Nowhere in the bible when it says you can aside moral law. But here Sabbath and worship regulations were set aside. Jesus is then implying that that Sabbath rules and regulations are provisional. That means there are temporary. They will end when something comes along that makes them obsolete to which they point to and what would that be? Verse 5 says, "Then Jesus said to them, “The Son of Man is Lord of the Sabbath." What Jesus is saying is this: "I am the one that the Sabbath regulations all pointed to. I can give you the deep rest of the soul that you need. I am the Lord of rest.
Let's look more in detail why Jesus is the lord of Sabbath because many like myself come to Jesus and still find no rest because we have no clue what we have in Jesus. We still have not taken hold of what we have in Jesus.
How is Jesus the Lord of Rest and why? Let me take you to a couple of passages. First let's go back to Genesis where we find the original meaning of rest. Let's look at the end of Genesis 1. It says, "God saw that all he had made and it was very good." Then the beginning of Genesis 2, "the seventh day God had finished the work he had been doing; so on the seventh day he rested from all his work." God rested. What does it mean he rested? Was he tired? Was he exhausted from creating the heavens and earth? For us rest means rest from work? Rest means to take a day off, take a vacation, or take a long nap.
When we look at Genesis 1, we noticed that every time God makes something, before he goes on to make something else, he says something over and over again and what it is it? He makes something and looks at it says, "That was good." Then he makes something else and says again, "That was good." Then after he finished everything he says, “It was very good, and then he rested. That’s the meaning rest. It means he was utterly satisfied with what's been done. The only way you can stop working is when you are utterly satisfied. Now you can rest, now you can relax.
Second, let's scroll forward to Hebrews chapter 4 where the writer talks about the gospel and what it means to believe in Jesus and in verses 9 and 10 he says to Christians, "There remains, then, a Sabbath-rest for the people of God; for anyone who enters God’s rest also rests from his own work, just as God did from his." This is such an amazing statement! What does it mean to become a Christian? A Christian is someone who's able to look at your work the way God looked at his. To be able look at your life the way God looked at his. Through Jesus Christ, you can look at your life, you can look at yourself and say it's absolutely satisfying, it's absolutely good. There's nothing that needed to be done. It is good. All the work that I need to do is finished. How could that be? Sabbath is designed by God to tell us the story of who we are. The story of the Sabbath is the creation and God rested and we rest in order to honor the image of the divine in us to remind us that there is more to us than our work.
In this world, there's physical work and we do need rest from physical work. But God didn't give us the Sabbath to solve that problem. It’s not mainly to give us the rest from physical work because when we go back to Genesis, in the Garden of Eden there was physical work and there was no problem. The problem is not the presence of physical work but the lack of deep rest. The main reason why God gave us the Sabbath is that there is an inner problem in us. The inner problem is that we are trying to find out who we are. You know you're somebody. You know you're somebody important and you try to prove that through the doing, through works. Every human being does it.
Religious people believe that if I'm really good and do many good things, God will bless me. Secular people are the same. They don't believe in God or the law, or the bible, but they set their standards and their entire self image rests on meeting those standards, living up to those goals. How did Cain live? He lived to make a name for himself. He lived to prove to himself he was somebody. That's the work that makes us weary and if we rest on that work, we will be restless because that work will never be finished, never over, never enough, never satisfied. You can never say, "It is finished." Maybe you can say for one day, but what about tomorrow? There's always something you need to do to prove to yourself.
For example: The movie Rocky with Sylvester Stallone. Many say the first Rocky movie was best one. And in that first Rocky movie, the question came to Rocky, “Why are you working so hard? Why all the trumpet sound while you run through the streets of Little Italy and Philadelphia and up the stairs of the museum and all those stuff?” And his answer was all over the entire collections of Rocky movie, He said, “I wanted to prove to myself and others and that I'm not a bum.” And so he kept working hard and kept fighting even in his old age to prove that he's a not bum. And it's never going to enough for him.
Without deep rest, you can never say what God says, “It is good.” It is finished.” But in Hebrew 4, the writer says, only through Jesus can you get deep rest. Jesus says in Matthew 11:28, "Come to me you who are weary and burden and I give you rest. Take my yoke upon me and learn from me for I am gentle and humble in heart and you will find rest for your soul. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light." What he saying is that everybody is serving something. Everybody is trying to get identify out of something. But only if you make Jesus the meaning of your life, will you get absolute rest. Only through Jesus you would be able to look at yourself, your work, and everything and say, it is finished. Everything necessary for that needs to be done has been done. And it's all good.
How would Jesus be able to that? In verse 5 Jesus says that he's the Lord of the Sabbath. What he's saying is this, "I'm the one who invented the Sabbath; I'm the one who fulfills the Sabbath. And to the Pharisees, he's saying that he's to be going to be God and their response to Jesus in verse 11 it reads, "But they were furious and began to discuss with one another what they might do to Jesus." The only thing they could do is to have him killed. But that made Jesus the Lord of the Sabbath. Because when he was on the cross, what happened? Jesus was crying was, he was calling out, he was restless. Why? Isaiah 57: 20 says, "But the wicked are like the tossing sea, which cannot rest, whose waves cast up mire and mud." There is no peace and rest for the wicked. 2Corinthians 5:21 says, “God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God." Here's what’s happening to Jesus on the cross. When God turned himself away for son, Jesus was experiencing what is said in Isaiah 57:20. He was experiencing infinite restlessness, because without God there's only restlessness. And when he died he was able to say which he did, “it is finished.” Everything that is necessary for salvation is finished. Everything that is needed for us to be accepted by God is finished. Jesus Christ came to live the life you should've lived perfectly, and died the death you should have died, and paid the penalty so that when God looks at you and because you have received Christ as your Savior, God then says, it is good.
What does it mean to be a Christian? We rest not on my works but rest on his finished work. 2 Corinthians 5:21 means that when you rest on Jesus finished work, God imputes your sin to him, and imputes his righteousness to you, then when God looks at you in Christ, he says it is good.
Remember the movie "Chariots of Fire" it's about the Sabbath and there are two main characters. One guy can't stop working. He is a runner, a sprinter and somebody asked him, "Why are you working so hard to go to Olympics and win the gold medal and his answer was, “I have 10 seconds (which is the dash) "I have 10 seconds to justify my existence." He wanted to prove to himself he was somebody and so he was driven. But there's another guy who finds out that the gold medal race is to be held on a Sunday and he's a Christian. He's committed to the practice of Sabbath. But it's not a legalistic thing at all. Eric Little, the Christian was so free, so secure in who he is Christ that he was willing to say, I'm not going to run even if it cost me the gold medal.” But irony here is the other guy who gets the gold medal, but it was not enough, never satisfied because the inner self work that makes you weary is never finished except in Jesus. Only in Jesus you can say it is finished, In Jesus, God looks at you and say, it is good.
II. How do we practice Sabbath rest?
So now if you understand what we just talked about, which is the need of Sabbath rest, if you understand that only Jesus can give you the deep rest and how he did it, then you can move on to how we put into practice. How do we now practice Sabbath? Some Christians believe that because Jesus came and fulfilled all the Sabbath rules and regulations, we don't need to practice Sabbath but in this passage he didn't say anything about getting rid of the Sabbath. The practice of Sabbath is still there. Many think that because Jesus came, we no longer need to practice the Sabbath rules and regulations and that's a problem. There's a danger there. We do need to discipline ourselves so that we may know our relationship to work and free ourselves from work to be able to practice Sabbath. And here are a few inner disciplines that we need to do.
A. Two inner disciplines
1. Sabbath is an act of liberation. Deuteronomy 5:15 says, "Remember that you were slaves in Egypt and that the LORD your God brought you out of there with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm. Therefore the LORD your God has commanded you to observe the Sabbath day." First of all, slaves don't get days off. So if you don't rest, you're a slave. This is not just work for income but a slave of something and you can't say no to it. If you can't set it aside and you're too busy, then you are slave. You're a slave to you own needs, self-ambition, need of self-salvation, you're family's hope, culture's expectations, slave to your job. Then you need to say inside your heart and soul, that you're work does not define you. Jesus Christ defines you. You’re not defined by what you do, how much money you make, not by your accomplishments, how expert you’ve become. You need time off from all these. You need to free yourself from these things. You need time off. Sabbath is an act of liberation.
2. Sabbath is an act of trust. We rest on what God has done, which means we're not God, we're not the one who is controlling the world. You’re not the one who provides for you needs and your family's need.
B. External Discipline
Next are the external disciplines. Make sure that you do the internal disciplines first. When you do the internal disciplines then external will be easy and here are the external disciplines:
1. Take more Sabbath time - it's not just Sunday, but every day.
2. Balance your use of Sabbath time - Do some Avocation. This means do something that you don't ordinarily do like fishing. (I'm talking fishing fish) If you’re a fisherman then it's not the proper avocation for you. Do something that would make you enjoy God's finished work. Camping is also good avocation.
Contemplative - means you have to tell yourself the story of who you are in Jesus. You have to preach to yourself.
3. Be accountable for Sabbath time - you need someone to tell you when you are overwork or when you are under Sabbath mode. Some of us here are too busy because of school or working hard to make a lot of money because you want something so bad. Or working too hard in ministry, or when you're exhausted and don't know why. You need someone to stop you and tell you that you need some time off. You need Sabbath rest.
4. Finally community - I'm talking about group studies, workshops, and conferences. Get some other people with you and brain storm how can we keep ourselves from being over worked, how to set aside work, how we can do rest.
We all are in need of Sabbath rest. Billy Graham, the renowned evangelist is now 92 years old. He was given an interview and one of the things he said was this. "My wife is already in heaven. I look forward to seeing her definitely in the near future because I'm 92 now and I know that my time is limited on this earth."
And when he was asked if he was to do it over again would he do it differently he said yes and this is what he said, "I would study more. I would pray more, travel less,takeless speaking engagements. I took too many of them in too many places around the world," he said. "If I had it to do over again, I'd spend more time in meditation and prayer and just telling the Lord how much I love Him and adore Him and looking forward the time we're going to spend together for eternity." That's the need of Sabbath rest.
In this passage we learn we need Sabbath rest and Jesus is the only one who can give us deep rest. We rest on what did Jesus and says, It is finished, and God looks at you and says, It is good.
Resources: Keller, Timothy http://sermons2.redeemer.com/sermons/work-and-rest
