 |
 |
 |
||||||||
|
|
|
||||||||
|
 |
A Good Day to Do Good
Last week we saw how God sometimes has to shout to get our attention. We are busy and frantic and always working and worried, buzzing around like busy bees, trying to survive and keep things above water, but unable to hear Him, to listen to Him, to know Him really, tired and frazzled and unhealthy.
We saw that at he very beginning of created time He gave us a gift. He planned big things around His giving of this gift. He made this gift just for us, with us in mind. This gift of course is the gift of the seventh day.
Last week we went back to Genesis to see that the setting aside of one day in seven to cease from work and rest is part of the structure of creation. Today we are going to skip past the Fourth Commandment to see how Jesus handled the issue of Sabbath. Then next week we will get down to some of the details as to what sorts of things we might consider doing and not doing on our seventh day rest.
The creation ordinances of marriage, work, and Sabbath were instituted before sin came into the world. Mankind’s fall into sin, and the curse of God which has come upon the created order, has changed all of these facets of our life here. Conflict has entered into the relationship between man and woman. People get sick and die, leaving behind loved ones who grieve their absence. Work has become hard and laborious Because chaos now so easily sweeps over us like a flood, we worry and worry about surviving, so we work more and more. Being separated from God, we now find our meaning as human beings in our work. We become obsessed with work. Physically, we are weaker now. We get sick more easily. Our bodies break down. They decay. After the fall, there is all the more reason to rest one day in seven, yet there is more and more pressure not to.
Our fall into sin and decay affects our rest in many ways.
First of all, as I have said, work is harder since the fall. Our bodies are weaker. The ground does not cooperate as it once did. Our work mates are also fallen sinners. We tire more easily than we would have.
Second, we are more inclined to think that we cannot afford to stop. Without infusing lots of energy, things tend toward decay. The thorns and thistles just keep growing. From every side the normal forces of chaos threaten to unravel us. Oh, how we try to keep them at bay. But we are not immune from forces which would unravel the lives we so carefully try to construct.
Third, even if we could manage to stop from work, we may not be able to rest really. We may have a sickness or disease that plagues us whether we work or don’t work. Or we may be in a broken relationship from which there is no rest whether we work or don’t work. We may be all alone, and rest may just make us feel more alone than ever. Or we may be worried sick over loved ones who are ill.
Fourth, even if we have none of these problems inhibiting our rest, we may be far from God, so even if we do manage to physically and mentally rest, we are not able to rest in Him, delight in Him, and be refreshed in Him.
Fifth, even if we do know Him, we still deal with our own sin, and cannot fully find rest from its effects upon us. Spiritual forces of evil threaten to undo us, and so, even as we seek to find rest in God alone, we still must be vigilant, which isn’t always restful.
Sixth, even if we do all of this right and are truly able to enter into physical, emotional, and spiritual rest one day in seven, there are still all the other days. Until the day we each die, there are still future days head in this life, and if we are realistic we know that we will suffer many things, we will wear out, we will always be striving to subdue an uncooperative earth during those other six days. So even if we do this seventh day thing just right, we know that it’s just a temporary rest in the midst of an otherwise wild and crazy ride.
Seventh, even if we are really together and are able to rest in all that this rest means, we know that there are millions of others unable to enter into rest. What about them while I am resting? We can actually be too concerned with our rest and not concerned enough with other people not entering into rest. Remember, we have a two fold mission, to enter into the blessings of knowing God, but also to be channels of His salvation blessing to others.
These are the realities. I don’t like to whitewash things, and I haven’t. When we consider all this, we rest in our hope of one day entering into the full and complete Sabbath rest of God. As it says in Hebrews 4:9:
There remains, then, a Sabbath-rest for the people of God;
We know that whatever rest we get now, it is but a shadow of the fullness of rest and peace and wholeness that will be ours in the new Heaven and new Earth.
Jesus also faced these same realities in His ministry. Jesus dealt with this issue of Sabbath time and time again. It seems that his favorite time to heal was on the Sabbath. I would like to read a few of these Sabbath healing accounts, but before I do let me mention two or three things about Jesus’ teaching and ministry that will help us understand these stories better.
Jesus came into the world to save sinners. He came to save sinners from the guilt of sin, the consequences of sin, the power of sin, and the effects of sin.
Jesus came to bring rest. Remember his words:
"Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light" (Matthew 11:28-30).
Whatever real rest is, it can only come about as sin and its consequences are rolled back. Jesus came to defeat the work of the enemy. To prove his authority to forgive sins, to prove the significance of who he was, to declare war on the work of Satan, to show forth the love and compassion and mercy of His Father in heaven, he came with healing in his wings.
And so as he went from place to place teaching about the kingdom of heaven, he healed, he cast out demons, he ate with tax collectors and sinners. And he got himself into a lot of trouble.
Let me now read three accounts where Jesus brings healing and a measure of rest to people in need, and gets into lots of trouble for doing it.
If you want to read along, you could turn to Mark chapter 3 and Luke chapter 13. I will read the passage in Mark first, so keep your finger on Luke 13 and we will go there second.
The first is found in Mark 3:1-6:
Another time he went into the synagogue, and a man with a shriveled hand was there. Some of them were looking for a reason to accuse Jesus, so they watched him closely to see if he would heal him on the Sabbath. Jesus said to the man with the shriveled hand, "Stand up in front of everyone." Then Jesus asked them, "Which is lawful on the Sabbath: to do good or to do evil, to save life or to kill?" But they remained silent. He looked around at them in anger and, deeply distressed at their stubborn hearts, said to the man, "Stretch out your hand." He stretched it out, and his hand was completely restored. Then the Pharisees went out and began to plot with the Herodians how they might kill Jesus.
The second story is found in Luke 13:10-17:
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?" When he said this, all his opponents were humiliated, but the people were delighted with all the wonderful things he was doing.
The third story I will read comes from Luke 14:1-6
One Sabbath, when Jesus went to eat in the house of a prominent Pharisee, he was being carefully watched. There in front of him was a man suffering from dropsy. Jesus asked the Pharisees and experts in the law, "Is it lawful to heal on the Sabbath or not?" But they remained silent. So taking hold of the man, he healed him and sent him away. Then he asked them, "If one of you has a son or an ox that falls into a well on the Sabbath day, will you not immediately pull him out?" And they had nothing to say.
Now if you are so inclined, there are two other important Sabbath healing stories from the book of John. One is the story in John 5 of the man who had been an invalid for 38 years, and the other is the more famous story of the man born blind in John chapter 9.
So what do we do with all of these Sabbath healing accounts? It appears, since the gospel writers had a great deal of material to choose from, that the fact that Jesus healed on the Sabbath and got in trouble for it must have been very important, important to Jesus at the time, and important to those who compiled the gospel accounts. A few points come to my mind as I consider these stories.
First, none of the people Jesus healed were in what you might call a medical emergency.
There was
a) a man with a shriveled hand
b) a woman crippled for 18 years
c) a man with dropsy
d) an invalid of 38 years
e) a man born blind
Amongst these people there are no heart attacks, no gunshot wounds, no broken bones, no high fevers. None of these people would be processed through a modern emergency room.
Second, Jesus really went out of his way to make his point when it came to healing on the Sabbath. In the first story of the man with the shriveled hand, Jesus is teaching in a synagogue on the Sabbath. The synagogue rulers were watching to see if Jesus would in fact heal on the Sabbath. He of course knew that they were watching for this very thing. He doesn’t go off into a corner and whisper, “Oh., Mister, your hand is healed.” No, he asks the man to stand up in front of everyone, and then makes his point – “Which is lawful on Sabbath, to do good or to do evil?”
As to the woman crippled for 18 years, Jesus calls out amongst the crowd at the synagogue for the woman to come forward. There in front of everyone, he heals her.
As to the man with dropsy, again, Jesus clearly initiates the conflict. He asks the Pharisees whether it is lawful to heal or not heal on the Sabbath.
Jesus seems to be trying to make a point.
Third, the Pharisees are by this time trying to find a reason to accuse Jesus. He knows they are. And he gives them lots of ammunition. How? Because it was in fact against the law to heal on the Sabbath.
This all makes the Pharisees out to be horrid people, which, I can say with confidence, they were not.
It’s easy for us to caricature the Pharisees. I am sure that were we to meet one of these Pharisees, we would think him to be a warm, gracious, self effacing family man deeply concerned about God and the things of God. They rightly took seriously the covenant established between God and Israel at Sinai.
They believed themselves to be the chosen people, children of Abraham in a dark and crooked and pagan world.
The question as to who was it exactly that belonged to that group called the people of God was very important to them. Who was a Jew? What set a Jew apart? How could the Jews maintain their God given distinctive in the midst of a very pagan world controlled by foreign powers?
We ask the same sort of questions. Who is it that belongs to the family of God? Who really is a Christian? What sets a Christian apart? How can Christians maintain their God given distinctives in the midst of a pagan world?
Sabbath observance was a Jewish distinctive like circumcision. Keeping Sabbath was one way of saying, “I go with the God of Israel.” Keeping Sabbath was one way of honoring the God of Israel. And to be fair to the Pharisees, the Covenant was in fact full of very serious commandments about Sabbath keeping.
But in fact, the Pharisees and rabbis had distorted and perverted Sabbath almost beyond recognition. They had become overly scrupulous in avoiding anything which looked even remotely like work. There were lists and lists of the most trivial things which one could not do on Sabbath. So for example, the man in John 5 crippled for 38 years who Jesus healed, this man gets chastised for carrying his mat on the Sabbath.
The Pharisees were too scrupulous. We are not scrupulous enough.
The Pharisees practiced what many might call an ethic of avoidance. Their energy went into making sure that they did not violate the negative sense of the commandment. Their emphasis was on what shouldn’t be done.
The problem was, and is, that the Pharisees’ list of what shouldn’t be done on the seventh day was too long, and our list of what shouldn’t be done on the seventh day is too short.
We also are trapped in an ethic of avoidance. What do we try to avoid? We try to avoid an ethic of avoidance. We try to avoid the appearance that we are trying to avoid something. We are so touchy about appearing legalistic that we fail, just like the Pharisees, to see the positive beauty of the commandments.
The Pharisees had forgotten and we likewise have forgotten, that the seventh day was meant to be a release from the burdens of life. By adding minute rule after minute rule to the Fourth Commandment, the Pharisees had placed a great burden upon the people.
By trying to avoid all appearances of rules we too have placed a burden upon ourselves and our families. This is the burden that comes when we avoid the blessing of seventh day ceasing and resting.
As we saw last week, the seventh day came into being for the sake of man. You can go one of two ways and miss out on the blessing God intends in this day. You can add hundreds of little rules so that keeping the day becomes a burden. Or you can avoid all rules so that you miss out on the way the seventh day is meant to give you freedom from your burdens.
The fourth point to these stories is that Jesus gives the positive meaning intended by the Sabbath commandments. Let it be said that Jesus never broke the letter of the Fourth Commandment as given in the Old Covenant law. Jesus in that sense was an Old Covenant Jew.
But he also never broke the intent of the Fourth Commandment either. One of His desires was to bring clarity to the real intention of the law. He used the problem of the way the Pharisees kept Sabbath both to teach about the real intent of the seventh day, and to teach something very important about what God is doing in the world.
So rightly he says to the Pharisees, “You hypocrites!”
“You lead your animals to water on the Sabbath. Can’t a woman, a daughter of Abraham no less, bound by disease for 18 years, be set free?”
“You pull your ox out of a pit on the Sabbath day. Can’t a man with dropsy be healed?”
“You circumcise on the eighth day. Can I not heal the whole man on the Sabbath?”
“Which is lawful,” Jesus asks, “to do good or evil, to save life or to kill?”
“But,” they might respond, “ we’re not killing. We’re not doing evil.”
“Yes you are,” says Jesus, “By refusing to bring life to others”
“By refusing to preserve and defend life”
“By refusing to lift other people’s burdens”
“This is doing evil, this is like killing!”
The Sabbath is made to release men and woman from their burdens, not add to their burdens. Jesus has come into the world to bring freedom to the captives, give sight to the blind, to roll back the effects of the curse.
When God looked out over his completed work back in Genesis chapter 1, when he pronounced it all very good, He did not see men with shriveled hands, women crippled for 18 years, men or women born blind. He did not see broken relationships, loneliness, or alienation. He didn’t see death. He didn’t see addictions.
The world He pronounced very good was not infected by sin and death and decay at all. But Adam and Eve did disobey; they did rebel against their good and kind Creator, and their world was cast headlong into sin and decay.
Jesus says in one place, “My Father is working to this day, and I too am working.” What’s this? I thought it said back in Genesis 2 that God “shabathed” or “ceased” from His labors. I thought it said that God stopped working.
Yes, there is a sense where creation work has ended, even though God still must uphold His creation by the word of His power.
But it’s the work of redemption Jesus is talking about here. God has been and is working to save sinners and bring them into His rest, into the reality of His seventh day rest.
And there is no better time to extend redemptive love than on the seventh day.
Why?
Because the seventh day after the fall is just a shadow of the eternal Sabbath rest which believers will enjoy forever with God.
When I say “eternal Sabbath rest” I don’t mean to say that all we’ll do in the new heaven and new earth is take long lazy naps.
“Rest” as a Bible word points to a condition of well being, safety, a condition in which enemies are vanquished and burdens are lifted. In real Biblical rest there is no decay and chaos beating at the door, no enemies lurking around the corner, no relationships about to explode, no disease about to overwhelm. “Rest” speaks of life being really lived as it was meant to be lived before sin entered into the world, when God looked out over the world he had made and said it was all very good.
We think of the phrase, “may he rest in peace” we think not of a person taking a long heavenly nap, but of a condition of freedom from that which brings sorrow and death.
Since the fall, the seventh day has become a symbol or type or prefiguring of this final condition of real and total rest in Christ.
Because no matter how well we manage to avoid working on the seventh day, no matter how good we are at keeping a seventh day, we are at best just temporarily holding the forces of decay at bay. Yes, we have times and moments of peace and rest. Maybe blissful moments, by God’s grace, where we are at rest in Him, at rest physically, at rest from pain and sorrow and grief, at rest in His world, at rest in our relationships. These moments come from time to time. We thank our Lord for these times. They are the result of His redemptive work on our behalf. They are like a little down payment, a little foretaste of our eternal Sabbath rest with Him.
But even if we could manage to do it all right and have lots of times like this, what about those folks that can’t manage to enjoy rest.
What about the person grieving over the loss of a loved one?
What about the person who has been disowned by his parents?
What about the person who suffers from constant arthritis?
What about the invalid?
What about the parent of the handicapped child?
What about the elderly man or woman alone in a nursing home?
What about the person fighting against addiction?
So we are under obligation on the seventh day, not only to rest, but to bring rest to others, to relieve others of their burdens, to participate in Jesus’ work of redeeming and healing a broken world.
This is why it is a good thing on a Sunday to visit someone in prison, to go see a aunt in a retirement home, to call a lonely friend, to care for a person in the hospital, to ask a couple having marital problems over for dinner, to spend time with a neighborhood kid who needs a father figure, to share the gospel with a neighbor, to play games with a friend who is under lots of pressure.
The seventh day isn’t a day just to be lazy and slothful. It is a day to rest, yes, but not just selfishly, as if our seventh day rest was all that mattered. The seventh day isn’t spent as a practical means of getting our lives perfectly organized and in perfect rhythm. The seventh day isn’t a day to spend selfishly. No, while the work of redemption goes on we are to participate in it. And we are to participate in this work even on the seventh day. We do this three ways.
First, we join with those who have saved in Christ and we celebrate our life in Him. We worship our Lord as savior and redeemer. We do this on the Lord’s day, the day Jesus rose from the dead, the day our final victory and final rest was secured, the day Jesus defeated death, defeated the curse, and rose into life with a new resurrection body. When we worship we join with the heavenly choir, with those saints before the throne of God who have themselves entered into His rest, who are resting from their work as they worship and adore their God.
Second, we take time to rest in Him, which means we spend time with Him, we pray, we consider his word, so that we might say, as David says in the Psalms, “my soul finds rest in God alone.” We enjoy Him together and alone with ourselves. We do as He says to do when he says:
"Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light."
I’m going to tell it to you straight. If you spend this day studying, shopping, mowing, paying bills, and all that stuff we call work, it will be very hard for you ever to enter into the positive intent for the seventh day, and this into the fullness of God’s blessing for your life.
Third, we actively join in bringing rest to others. We don’t do this in some frantic ministry burnout way. But in a manner in keeping with our own seventh day rest, we reach out and extend rest to others.
Certainly this is one thing we celebrate this Advent season, that God did not sit on His heav’nly throne enjoying His seventh day rest from the work of creation and watch us all fall into utter ruin. No, at the same time that He in Himself enjoys His own Sabbath rest, for our sake and for the sake of His name, He is also working. For our sake and for the sake of His name God the Son has come and appeared in human flesh. For our sakes the Lord Jesus He has come to save sinners. For our sakes he has come to roll back the effects of the fall. This is Advent – God not giving up on the human race. This is Advent – God coming and uniting Himself forever to His creatures. This is Advent – God coming to call a people to Himself.
And so we sing…
No more let sins and sorrows grow,
nor thorns infest the ground;
He comes to make His blessings flow
Far as the curse is found,
Far as the curse is found,
Far as the curse is found.
And this is what Jesus teaches us as he stands before the Pharisees and heals a man with a shriveled hand or a woman crippled for 18 years. He teaches us what He is about, and what we can be about if we are in Him.
Jesus never chastised the Pharisees for their proper keeping of the seventh day. He never said. “You hypocrites, you stop plowing and trading while people are hurting.”
No indeed, in order for them to be at Synagogue they had to have stopped working. In order for them to join with him in bringing healing to others they had to have stopped working. And so do we.
In order to attend to the positive meaning we have to attend to the negative. We have to stop the one thing in order to start the other.
The seventh day is more than a day not to work. The seventh day is a good day to do good. In a fallen world full of broken and hurting people we cannot simply enjoy seventh day rest for ourselves. During His seventh day rest, God is working to save. During our seventh day rest we also consider how we may be channels of blessing and salvation to others.
Amen |
 |
|
 |
|
||||
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
||||
