Our Sabbath

[The following is a manuscript of my message delivered at Pilgrim Reformed Church on Sunday morning, the 9th of June, 2024.  A recording of our service should be available on our YouTube streaming channel: 

https://www.youtube.com/@pilgrimreformedchurch1992/streams.

And I still can't change text color, so no "red letter" version again.]

Family, if we look at our calendar, what is the first day of the new week?  It’s Sunday.  But what do we usually treat as the first day?  Monday, right?  We treat Sunday as if it were the last day of the week because it is the last day of our weekend, and we treat Monday as the first day, probably because it is the first day of the work week.  And in the world of business, Monday is the first day.

But Sunday was set as the first day back in 321 by Emperor Constantine who established the seven-day week for the Roman calendar.  Constantine was also the first Roman emperor to convert to Christianity, and basically the father of the Holy Roman Empire.  We use the Gregorian calendar, named after Pope Gregory XIII who introduced it in 1582.  You can see that our calendar and our seven-day week both have been greatly influenced by Christianity.

We tend to think the Sabbath is just a Jewish thing, and yes it is that, but it is much more.  God gave us the Sabbath as a day of rest, and a day to spend in worship of our Lord.  He created all there is in 6 days, then rested on the 7th, not because He needed rest, but to set the example for us, in how to treat ourselves, and how to treat the world.

By our reckoning, creation would have occurred on Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday.  Then comes the Sabbath, and it is Saturday, for us.  Our word "Sabbatical" comes from "Sabbath" and is the one period of rest after six periods of labor.  It is most often applied to pastors or priests or ministers being given a year to rest and spend in worship and study after every six years of service.  The earth can also benefit from a Sabbath, notably allowing a field to remain fallow for a year after being planted for six.

The ancient Jewish day ran from sunset to sunset, not like our midnight to midnight day, so their Sabbath, or Shabbat, began at sunset on Friday and ended at sunset on Saturday.  The Christian "Sabbath" - our day of worship - is Sunday, although we certainly don't observe it as God intended.

By the time of Jesus’ day, the religious leaders had taken God’s establishment of the Sabbath to the extreme, so much so that a person wasn’t even supposed to prepare a meal during those hours, but instead to eat what was prepared before sunset.  Devout Jews were so obedient to God's command to do no work on the Sabbath that they even held off preparing the body of Jesus for burial until after the Sabbath (by which time, of course, He had risen from the grave).  God forbid they should consider doing any work, like harvesting crops.

And that leads me to our scripture reading today.  Please listen and follow along as I read from chapter 2 verse 23 through chapter 3 verse 6 of the Apostle Mark’s Gospel account, and I’ll be reading from the New King James Version of our Holy Bible this morning…

2:23 Now it happened that He went through the grainfields on the Sabbath; and as they went His disciples began to pluck the heads of grain. 24 And the Pharisees said to Him, “Look, why do they do what is not lawful on the Sabbath?”

25 But He said to them, “Have you never read what David did when he was in need and hungry, he and those with him: 26 how he went into the house of God in the days of Abiathar the high priest, and ate the showbread, which is not lawful to eat except for the priests, and also gave some to those who were with him?”

27 And He said to them, “The Sabbath was made for man, and not man for the Sabbath. 28 Therefore the Son of Man is also Lord of the Sabbath.”

3:1 And He entered the synagogue again, and a man was there who had a withered hand. 2 So they watched Him closely, whether He would heal him on the Sabbath, so that they might accuse Him. 3 And He said to the man who had the withered hand, “Step forward.” 4 Then He said to them, “Is it lawful on the Sabbath to do good or to do evil, to save life or to kill?” But they kept silent. 5 And when He had looked around at them with anger, being grieved by the hardness of their hearts, He said to the man, “Stretch out your hand.” And he stretched it out, and his hand was restored as whole as the other. 6 Then the Pharisees went out and immediately plotted with the Herodians against Him, how they might destroy Him.

----Mark 2:23-3:6 (NKJV)

Let us pray…  Heavenly Father, we thank You for setting aside a period of time for all of Your creation to rest.  You gave us the Sabbath to allow us this rest and to also allow us to stop and reflect on all the mercy and goodness You extend to us.  Thank You for the Sabbath day, Father.  Sadly though, Lord, we no longer respect the Sabbath as we should.  Many have to labor through it, either out of personal necessity or out of greed.  Many treat it as a day to enjoy themselves, without giving a thought to You or Your lovingkindness.  Satan is hard at work in this world, keeping people blind to the truth, turning them away from worshiping You.  Please help us remember why You set aside a day for rest and worship.  Help us reach out to the non-believers of the world, sharing the Good News of salvation only available through Jesus.  Help us show Your love to all we encounter.  And please forgive us when we hesitate to serve You and Your Son Jesus.

Speak to us now, Father, that we might hear Your voice through Your Spirit within us and better understand Your message today.  Thank You for seeing our need to rest and giving us a time to do so.  This is just another sign of Your love for us, for Your creation.  Help us share Your love with all the world.  This we pray in the precious name of Your Son, Christ Jesus our Lord.   Amen.

American theologian L. S. Chafer, co-founder of the Dallas Theological Seminary, told this little story:

One man challenged another to an all-day wood chopping contest.  The challenger worked very hard, stopping only for a brief lunch break.  The other man had a leisurely lunch and took several breaks during the day.  At the end of the day, the challenger was surprised and annoyed to find that the other fellow had chopped substantially more wood than he had.  “I don't get it,” he said.  “Every time I checked, you were taking a rest, yet you chopped more wood than I did.”  “But you didn't notice,” said the winning woodsman, “that I was sharpening my ax when I sat down to rest.”

When we stop to rest, we "sharpen our tools" for the labors ahead.  And by that I mean our personal, bodily tools.  Our heart and lungs need some downtime when they’re not having to work so hard to supply us with blood and oxygen in our exertions.  Our brains need time to decompress, and to work through some of the events of the day, or just to go wandering off into some strange and wonderful, or frightening, world.  And even our spirits need time to rest, to reenergize.

Some of the early signs of sleep-deprivation are mood changes, difficulty handling even simple problems, hallucinations, depression.  We need enough rest time for our bodies, minds, and spirits to sharpen up and get ready for use again.

So, at one point during His ministry, Jesus and His disciples happened to be passing through a grain field during the Sabbath.  Let’s just imagine that it was around noon on that Saturday, and they were far from any town or village.  They were hungry, so the disciples began to pluck heads of grain as they walked and ate them.  Some Pharisees saw this and immediately shouted, “Stop!  You can’t do that!  It is not lawful!”  What was their offense?  Harvesting grain on the Sabbath; laboring on the day of rest.  No matter that they were hungry.  No matter that they were eating all they “harvested” and not setting any aside for later or for sale.  They were breaking the rigid code of the Sabbath.

Jesus rebuked the Pharisees by reminding them of the time that David and his men, on the run from King Saul and his troops, had eaten some of the showbread that only the priests were allowed to eat.  And then He issued an even greater rebuke, and what should have been an obvious truth: “The Sabbath was made for man, and not man for the Sabbath.”  God did not create man so that the Sabbath could be observed, but instead created the Sabbath so that man might rest and worship their Creator.

“And oh, by the way,” Jesus continued, “I am the Lord of the Sabbath, so what I allow to take place on the Sabbath is OK.”  The term Jesus used for Himself, here and quite often in His ministry, is “the Son of Man”.  This term comes from the Book of Daniel, where the prophet describes the Messiah as “One like the Son of Man”.  God in human form.  The Pharisees didn’t like that.

Nor did they care much for what Jesus did next.  He entered their synagogue, saw a man with a withered hand, and healed Him, again doing something the Pharisees deemed unlawful on the Sabbath.  In response to their unspoken accusations, Jesus rhetorically asked if it was lawful to do good on the Sabbath or to do evil, to save life or to kill?  In the Apostle Matthew’s telling of this event, Jesus also asks of the gathering, who, on the Sabbath, would not lift a sheep out of a pit that it had fallen into.  Sometimes, some form of labor just has to be performed, even on the Sabbath.

We might think the Pharisees’ attitude about the Sabbath to be extreme, and it certainly is by today’s standards.  But in all fairness, they were just following what they saw as God’s rule, as relayed from Him through Moses.  God commands us to keep the Sabbath, as recorded by Moses in his books of Deuteronomy and Exodus.

Hear what Moses wrote in Exodus chapter 20, verses 8 through 11…

8 “Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy. 9 Six days you shall labor and do all your work, 10 but the seventh day is the Sabbath of the Lord your God. In it you shall do no work: you, nor your son, nor your daughter, nor your male servant, nor your female servant, nor your cattle, nor your stranger who is within your gates. 11 For in six days the Lord made the heavens and the earth, the sea, and all that is in them, and rested the seventh day. Therefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and hallowed it.” 

--Exodus 20:8-11 (NKJV)

Do no work.  And this is a command not just to people, but to our animals as well, those that labor for us.  So yeah, we can almost say the Pharisees were justified in their behavior, but they could have been a bit more merciful in their application.

Today, we have moved to the opposite end of the spectrum, way past what even Jesus allowed.  Even our Sabbath day has changed, at least for us Christians.  We consider Sunday as our Sabbath day, and call it the Lord’s day.  Sunday is the first day, and Jesus was raised from the dead on the first day.  So this has become our day of rest and of worship.  But how many of us do?

Even among those who claim to be Christians, how many actually spend the day resting and worshiping our heavenly Father?  Many don’t even make it to church, taking advantage of the day off from work to go do other fun things.  They may “rest”, in the sense of enjoying recreation, but worship seldom enters the picture.

And then we have those who actually labor on Sundays.  Now, granted, there are some folks who must do so.  Life does not come to a halt on Sunday; stuff happens, and there are certain people who must respond when life rears an uglier head.  Our first responders, our hospital and nursing home staff, our military service people, our clergy, all must be on duty and ready to serve on Sundays just as on any day.

There are some who have to work because their employers are open for business on Sundays and require their employees to work at least some of them.  And then there are those who are just greedy and see Sunday as an opportunity to make more money.  I must admit that it is nice for my family and I to be able to go out and share a meal each Sunday after church, but I do really hate that some have to work just so we can enjoy that time together.

Our modern culture sure doesn’t make it easy for us to rest or to worship on Sundays.  How many times has one of your kids or grandkids had a ball game or other extracurricular activity scheduled on a Sunday morning, during church hours?  The church itself has become less and less important, less relevant, to the community, so our opportunities to skip worship have increased and become more attractive.

When we look around and lament what the world is coming to, and especially where America seems headed, we need to take a long, hard look in the mirror to see part of the problem.  Christianity has become diluted.  We have allowed Satan to infiltrate our ranks and poison our wells.  To often, the face we show the world is one of hatred and bias, bigotry and distrust.  Where is the love for our neighbors Jesus commands us to?  Where is the compassion, the mercy, the forgiveness?  Can anyone see a difference in us?  What has happened to our day of rest and worship?  To me, our failure to faithfully observe the Sabbath as God intended is a symptom of our greater sin of not truly following Jesus as Christians.  We claim with our lips what we don’t necessarily show through our actions.

There’s an old song that says “O Lord, send a revival, and let it begin with me”.  We can’t change things overnight.  And we can’t change everything that’s wrong.  But we can change our attitude.  We can change our priorities.  And we can start today, our Christian Sabbath.

Let’s make an effort to get more rest – I know that sounds like an oxymoron, but sometimes we have to purposely set our minds to do something, even if that something is to do nothing.  And let’s spend more time today in offering up praise and glory to our Father God.  Worship Him by spending more time with Him in prayer.  Worship Him by being more loving, more forgiving.  For this is God’s will for us.

In the blessed name of Jesus our Christ, the Son of God.  Amen.

Let us pray…  Heavenly Father, thank You for seeing to our physical and spiritual needs by giving us a day each week that we can – or should - devote to rest and worship.  Sadly though, Father, we have gotten away from the intent of our Sabbath, and now treat it as just a day off from work, a chance to go out and play.  Some of us have no choice but to continue working.  We don’t spend time in worship like we should.  We don’t praise You and give You the glory in the presence of others.  We too often fail to approach people to share the Gospel.  We’re too timid, too shy, too afraid to tell someone about Jesus.  Please forgive us these times, Father.  Help us share the Gospel message.  Help us fulfill our assigned mission for Jesus.  And as we do so, please help us be more forgiving, more merciful in our dealings with others.  And Father, guide us around any pitfalls in this life and strengthen our spirits to do Your will.  And please help us do a better job of sharing Jesus with others so that they too may be saved by Your mercy and His sacrifice.  

Father, please shield us from Satan as he attacks our faith, trying to make us his own.  Help us be better servants, glorifying You in all we do so that the world can see You in us, through our deeds, in how we live.  And help us remain strong, faithful, and true to You in all things, no matter what the world throws at us or holds out before us.

Please hear us now, Father, as we pause for just a moment to speak to You through Your Spirit within us, promising to be more obedient to Your commands, and seeking Your help to do so…

Lord Jesus, as Lord of the Sabbath, You allowed that some labors could be performed on that day of rest.  But You did not take away anything from our need to worship our God on that day.  Lord, we have strayed far from how we should observe the Sabbath, our Lord’s day.  Help us see the need for rest, and for worship.  Help us return to our true Christian faith and roots.  And in that regard, help us tell folks all about the Gospel, and to do so in a loving way.  Help us be more understanding, more merciful, more giving and forgiving of others, knowing that this is our Father’s will for us.  Help us reach out to the non-believing world with the Gospel message, showing Your love through our love.  Give us the words to say, show us what to do to help bring the lost to You.

Lord Jesus, please shield our minds and our hearts from Satan’s lies and the world’s empty promises.  Guide us around all the devil’s traps and snares.  Help us see though his temptations and all the false teachings.  Help us fend off his attacks.  Please help us be faithful and true to You, putting all our trust in You, all our hope in You.  Heal the hurts that separate and divide us one from another.  Help us keep our focus on the things of heaven and the needs of others rather than on anything this life might offer.  This we pray in Your blessed name, Christ Jesus our Lord and our Savior.  Amen.