Lord of the Sabbath – Mark 2:23-28
Lord of the Sabbath – Mark 2:23-28
By Pastor Lee Hemen
October 4, 2009 AM
I was in a discussion with one of our area’s ministry directors when he grandly announced that he did not agree with “organized religion.” I was stunned and immediately asked him, “Why then do we pay your salary?” He could not answer me. I then followed this by telling him, “If you have placed your faith in Christ, you are now part of an ‘organized religion’ that was prearranged by God Himself, centered on the foundation of the gospel message of salvation through His One and Only Son!” In being a Christian, you have submitted yourself to membership in the body of Christ.
There is a foolish discussion going on in some circles today about the importance of church membership in the life of the Christian. It has come about because of universalism creeping back into Christian theology from sources like the emergent church. It is not a new heresy. It is the notion that the church and thereby worship should center spirituality around the individual instead of the worship of God and the establishment of his kingdom through Jesus Christ. I find this blasphemous because this scheme focuses on the profane notion that church is not really important, only a relationship with Jesus is. Too many equate worship with being part of a church, and worse -- a relationship with Jesus! And while faith in Christ is primary, we are deliberately leaving out a whole lot of what Jesus taught about his church, what it meant to be a member, and the sanctity of the Sabbath when we dismiss it so carelessly. What then did Jesus mean when He related that he was “Lord of the Sabbath”? Let’s find out, shall we?
READ: Mark 2:23-28
Invariably someone will quote the verses we just read to justify their not joining a church or not being in worship regularly. As I stated before, it is heresy. Why would I say this? Because we as independent cusses do not like it when someone tells we should do something, especially when it concerns “our worship.” We have this flawed notion way in the back of our heads that has been implanted by someone at sometime that sooths our prideful spirit that says we do not need “organized religion,” and we lump our worship or church membership into that category. We are wrong if we do and we are just as wrong if we use today’s passage of Scripture to justify that notion. Let’s discover why Jesus said He was “Lord of the Sabbath.” First…
I. Let’s remind ourselves whom the Sabbath was made for!
1. The Sabbath is for God’s children! Jesus defended why his disciples’ actions. Why? It was a pretty pathetic breakfast Jesus’ followers had on that Sabbath: Just a few miserable grain heads that they rubbed the chaff off and then ate dry. (Yum!?) However, even this meager meal was begrudged them by the legalistic Pharisees: “Look, why are they doing what is unlawful on the Sabbath?” they ask Jesus. Their concocted religious code could not condone labor on the Sabbath and what Jesus’ disciples were doing was considered by them as WORK! (They were picking and threshing grain!) Jesus immediately queries: “Have you never read what David did when he and his companions were hungry and in need? In the days of Abiathar the high priest, he entered the house of God and ate the consecrated bread, which is lawful only for priests to eat. And he also gave some to his companions.” This story comes from 1 Samuel 21:1-9, where David flees for his life when he learns that King Saul is seeking to kill him. David knew that his men were starving and that God would not begrudge them the bread from his own altar to feed those he had created. The Apostle John would rejoice, “How great is the love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God!” (1 John 3:1) It’s true because John knew that “to all who received him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God.” (John 1:12) Jesus instructs these Pharisees that the Sabbath, while a sacred institution, was “made for man.” God’s day of respite followed after man was made for our spiritual rest. It is to be a sacred day whereby God’s children come and worship Him. “Man” here means those whom God knows, not all mankind. Therefore, for the believer the Sabbath should not be a day whereby we excuse anything we do as honoring to God. It is to be a day of corporate spiritual rest. This is why Hebrews scolds Christians to “not give up meeting together, as some are in the habit of doing, but let us encourage one another--and all the more as you see the Day approaching.” (Hebrews 10:25) Yes, the Sabbath was made for man, but it was made for those who loved God to come and worship Him!
EXAMPLE: I can still remember my father telling me to “sit still” during the worship service. Being a little boy I got easily bored, but my father would have none of it. When I whined that the pews were hard, the service was WAY TOO LONG, and the priest BORING, he tersely informed me, “Lee, this is not about you. This is about worshipping God.” He was correct. We live in a day and age where we have misplaced the sacred, thinking that church and worship should revolve around us, our children, or that it is there to make us feel good about ourselves. We wait for the pastor to pump us up for another week and the music to ascend us to the throne of God, forgetting that the focus of our worship is not about us, but it is to be completely about Christ. When it is not, is it ungodly. God only inhabits the praise of his people as they have totally given themselves to him. Too many come to worship in order to be personally revived, when what they need is to be resurrected! This is why Jesus warned, “You hypocrites! Isaiah was right when he prophesied about you: ‘These people honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me. They worship me in vain; their teachings are but rules taught by men.’”(Matthew 15:7-9) Certainly the Sabbath was made for us, but it was made for us to worship him and not ourselves.
The Bible teaches us that it was Jesus who made the Sabbath and we are to realize its importance for our spiritual health. In fact we need to get reacquainted with the old fashioned ideal that Sunday is the Lord’s day for the believer. We discover that believers began to meet early, on the “first day of the week”, to worship Jesus. (Acts 20:7; 1 Cor. 16:2; Rev. 1:10) It honored his resurrection and reminded them of their new life in Christ. It also set them apart from the Jews and their legalism. Christians would do well to remember who established our day of worship. Therefore…
II. Let’s discover whom the Sabbath was made by!
1. God created the Sabbath! We learned that Jesus argued for His disciples because of what they needed, but also because of how God loved them. The Sabbath was important, but they were hungry. Was it therefore more important to follow a rather obscure manmade legalistic interpretation to not pick grain on the Sabbath or to feed one’s self? We know that “ritual observances must always give way to moral obligations.” We know this from Jesus relating about the Samaritan helping a man who was robbed and left for dead! (Luke 10:30-37) or to the legalist who came and asked, “Teacher, what good thing must I do to get eternal life?” and Jesus responded, “If you want to be perfect, go, sell your possessions and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me.” (Matthew 19:16-22) Jesus told the Pharisaic Nicodemus, “I tell you the truth, no one can see the kingdom of God unless he is born again.” (John 3:3) So we know that it is not through a legalistic adherence to a set of manmade laws that we are saved, but by faith in Jesus alone. As Paul would shout, “For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith--and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God!” (Ephesians 2:8) Jesus states that “the Son of Man is Lord of even of the Sabbath!” Jesus was therefore reminding these Pharisees about Who made the Sabbath! But we dare not use these examples to excuse our rather lackadaisical attitude concerning our church or our worship. Why? God’s church is sacred to him. He made for us a day of worship and bought the church with the price of his Son’s blood on a cruel cross. His church represents Jesus’ “body” in the world whereby Christians are to worship and serve him! This is why Paul would remind the Corinthians that “If one part suffers, every part suffers with it; if one part is honored, every part rejoices with it. Now you are the body of Christ, and each one of you is a part of it.” (1 Corinthians 12:26-27) We would do well to remember that Jesus is the Lord of even the Sabbath and that it was God who made the Sabbath for his body the church!
EXAMPLE: We live in a country of Constitutional freedoms whereby we equate individual freedom in the same vein as spiritual freedom. We would do well to remember that they are not the same at all. Just because we live in a land where we can do almost anything we want whenever we want to, it does not justify our neglect of coming together as believers to worship the Lord our God. We are to come together as a church, the body of Christ, and worship Jesus. Christians should be in church on Sunday, our Sabbath, to worship God with other believers. Paul reminds us: “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.” (Colossians 1:16) Jesus created the Sabbath and He had a right to have his followers pick and eat grain. God did not begrudge his children eating what he has created on the day he created for them! However, that does not excuse us from doing whatever we desire on the day we should set aside for worship. Believers are to “Remember the Sabbath day by keeping it holy.” (Exodus 20:8) not because of legalism, but because it honors and glorifies God and his Son Jesus whom created it for our benefit.
Conclusion:
Today we have learned two things about the Sabbath: 1) The Sabbath is for God’s children, and 2) God created the Sabbath. Now, how will you spend your coming Sundays? Waiting for God to “bless you” or worshipping him as you are supposed to?
---
This article is copyrighted © 2009 by Lee Hemen and is the sole property of Lee Hemen, and may not be used unless you quote the entire article and have my permission. You now have my permission to use the entire article.
By Pastor Lee Hemen
October 4, 2009 AM
I was in a discussion with one of our area’s ministry directors when he grandly announced that he did not agree with “organized religion.” I was stunned and immediately asked him, “Why then do we pay your salary?” He could not answer me. I then followed this by telling him, “If you have placed your faith in Christ, you are now part of an ‘organized religion’ that was prearranged by God Himself, centered on the foundation of the gospel message of salvation through His One and Only Son!” In being a Christian, you have submitted yourself to membership in the body of Christ.
There is a foolish discussion going on in some circles today about the importance of church membership in the life of the Christian. It has come about because of universalism creeping back into Christian theology from sources like the emergent church. It is not a new heresy. It is the notion that the church and thereby worship should center spirituality around the individual instead of the worship of God and the establishment of his kingdom through Jesus Christ. I find this blasphemous because this scheme focuses on the profane notion that church is not really important, only a relationship with Jesus is. Too many equate worship with being part of a church, and worse -- a relationship with Jesus! And while faith in Christ is primary, we are deliberately leaving out a whole lot of what Jesus taught about his church, what it meant to be a member, and the sanctity of the Sabbath when we dismiss it so carelessly. What then did Jesus mean when He related that he was “Lord of the Sabbath”? Let’s find out, shall we?
READ: Mark 2:23-28
Invariably someone will quote the verses we just read to justify their not joining a church or not being in worship regularly. As I stated before, it is heresy. Why would I say this? Because we as independent cusses do not like it when someone tells we should do something, especially when it concerns “our worship.” We have this flawed notion way in the back of our heads that has been implanted by someone at sometime that sooths our prideful spirit that says we do not need “organized religion,” and we lump our worship or church membership into that category. We are wrong if we do and we are just as wrong if we use today’s passage of Scripture to justify that notion. Let’s discover why Jesus said He was “Lord of the Sabbath.” First…
I. Let’s remind ourselves whom the Sabbath was made for!
1. The Sabbath is for God’s children! Jesus defended why his disciples’ actions. Why? It was a pretty pathetic breakfast Jesus’ followers had on that Sabbath: Just a few miserable grain heads that they rubbed the chaff off and then ate dry. (Yum!?) However, even this meager meal was begrudged them by the legalistic Pharisees: “Look, why are they doing what is unlawful on the Sabbath?” they ask Jesus. Their concocted religious code could not condone labor on the Sabbath and what Jesus’ disciples were doing was considered by them as WORK! (They were picking and threshing grain!) Jesus immediately queries: “Have you never read what David did when he and his companions were hungry and in need? In the days of Abiathar the high priest, he entered the house of God and ate the consecrated bread, which is lawful only for priests to eat. And he also gave some to his companions.” This story comes from 1 Samuel 21:1-9, where David flees for his life when he learns that King Saul is seeking to kill him. David knew that his men were starving and that God would not begrudge them the bread from his own altar to feed those he had created. The Apostle John would rejoice, “How great is the love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God!” (1 John 3:1) It’s true because John knew that “to all who received him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God.” (John 1:12) Jesus instructs these Pharisees that the Sabbath, while a sacred institution, was “made for man.” God’s day of respite followed after man was made for our spiritual rest. It is to be a sacred day whereby God’s children come and worship Him. “Man” here means those whom God knows, not all mankind. Therefore, for the believer the Sabbath should not be a day whereby we excuse anything we do as honoring to God. It is to be a day of corporate spiritual rest. This is why Hebrews scolds Christians to “not give up meeting together, as some are in the habit of doing, but let us encourage one another--and all the more as you see the Day approaching.” (Hebrews 10:25) Yes, the Sabbath was made for man, but it was made for those who loved God to come and worship Him!
EXAMPLE: I can still remember my father telling me to “sit still” during the worship service. Being a little boy I got easily bored, but my father would have none of it. When I whined that the pews were hard, the service was WAY TOO LONG, and the priest BORING, he tersely informed me, “Lee, this is not about you. This is about worshipping God.” He was correct. We live in a day and age where we have misplaced the sacred, thinking that church and worship should revolve around us, our children, or that it is there to make us feel good about ourselves. We wait for the pastor to pump us up for another week and the music to ascend us to the throne of God, forgetting that the focus of our worship is not about us, but it is to be completely about Christ. When it is not, is it ungodly. God only inhabits the praise of his people as they have totally given themselves to him. Too many come to worship in order to be personally revived, when what they need is to be resurrected! This is why Jesus warned, “You hypocrites! Isaiah was right when he prophesied about you: ‘These people honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me. They worship me in vain; their teachings are but rules taught by men.’”(Matthew 15:7-9) Certainly the Sabbath was made for us, but it was made for us to worship him and not ourselves.
The Bible teaches us that it was Jesus who made the Sabbath and we are to realize its importance for our spiritual health. In fact we need to get reacquainted with the old fashioned ideal that Sunday is the Lord’s day for the believer. We discover that believers began to meet early, on the “first day of the week”, to worship Jesus. (Acts 20:7; 1 Cor. 16:2; Rev. 1:10) It honored his resurrection and reminded them of their new life in Christ. It also set them apart from the Jews and their legalism. Christians would do well to remember who established our day of worship. Therefore…
II. Let’s discover whom the Sabbath was made by!
1. God created the Sabbath! We learned that Jesus argued for His disciples because of what they needed, but also because of how God loved them. The Sabbath was important, but they were hungry. Was it therefore more important to follow a rather obscure manmade legalistic interpretation to not pick grain on the Sabbath or to feed one’s self? We know that “ritual observances must always give way to moral obligations.” We know this from Jesus relating about the Samaritan helping a man who was robbed and left for dead! (Luke 10:30-37) or to the legalist who came and asked, “Teacher, what good thing must I do to get eternal life?” and Jesus responded, “If you want to be perfect, go, sell your possessions and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me.” (Matthew 19:16-22) Jesus told the Pharisaic Nicodemus, “I tell you the truth, no one can see the kingdom of God unless he is born again.” (John 3:3) So we know that it is not through a legalistic adherence to a set of manmade laws that we are saved, but by faith in Jesus alone. As Paul would shout, “For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith--and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God!” (Ephesians 2:8) Jesus states that “the Son of Man is Lord of even of the Sabbath!” Jesus was therefore reminding these Pharisees about Who made the Sabbath! But we dare not use these examples to excuse our rather lackadaisical attitude concerning our church or our worship. Why? God’s church is sacred to him. He made for us a day of worship and bought the church with the price of his Son’s blood on a cruel cross. His church represents Jesus’ “body” in the world whereby Christians are to worship and serve him! This is why Paul would remind the Corinthians that “If one part suffers, every part suffers with it; if one part is honored, every part rejoices with it. Now you are the body of Christ, and each one of you is a part of it.” (1 Corinthians 12:26-27) We would do well to remember that Jesus is the Lord of even the Sabbath and that it was God who made the Sabbath for his body the church!
EXAMPLE: We live in a country of Constitutional freedoms whereby we equate individual freedom in the same vein as spiritual freedom. We would do well to remember that they are not the same at all. Just because we live in a land where we can do almost anything we want whenever we want to, it does not justify our neglect of coming together as believers to worship the Lord our God. We are to come together as a church, the body of Christ, and worship Jesus. Christians should be in church on Sunday, our Sabbath, to worship God with other believers. Paul reminds us: “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.” (Colossians 1:16) Jesus created the Sabbath and He had a right to have his followers pick and eat grain. God did not begrudge his children eating what he has created on the day he created for them! However, that does not excuse us from doing whatever we desire on the day we should set aside for worship. Believers are to “Remember the Sabbath day by keeping it holy.” (Exodus 20:8) not because of legalism, but because it honors and glorifies God and his Son Jesus whom created it for our benefit.
Conclusion:
Today we have learned two things about the Sabbath: 1) The Sabbath is for God’s children, and 2) God created the Sabbath. Now, how will you spend your coming Sundays? Waiting for God to “bless you” or worshipping him as you are supposed to?
---
This article is copyrighted © 2009 by Lee Hemen and is the sole property of Lee Hemen, and may not be used unless you quote the entire article and have my permission. You now have my permission to use the entire article.
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