Jesus Said Lord Over The Sabbath 2/18/18 -I love the names and titles of Jesus that the Bible gives Him. -Creator, Prince of Peace, Mighty God, Wonderful Counselor, The Lamb of God Who Takes Away the Sins of the World, The Prince of Life, Our Great High Priest, The Author and Perfecter of Our Faith, The Way, The Truth and The Life, Our Advocate, The Righteous Judge, The Exact Image of the Invisible God, The Alpha and the Omega, the Beginning and the End, and The King Who Is Coming...we could go on and on. -I want to talk with you today about a title that Jesus uses for Himself that is not as well known and not as worshipped but is just as powerful and just as meaningful. -Mark 2:28 (NLT) So the Son of Man is Lord, even over the Sabbath! -He uses two phrases here: (1) Son of Man -It is how Jesus commonly referred to Himself while physically on this earth. -Son of man referring to His humanity. -Fully human, born of a virgin. -A servant who had come to save sinful man. -He was in every way as we are yet without sin. -Son of Man referring to His deity. -Daniel 7 records Daniel s vision: -Animals, Beasts on the Earth ruling with authority and power, and then: -Daniel 7:13-14 (NLT) As my vision continued that night, I saw someone like a son of man coming with the clouds of heaven. He approached the Ancient One and was led into his presence. 14 He was given authority, honor, and sovereignty over all the nations of the world, so that people of every race and nation and language would obey him. His rule is eternal it will never end. His kingdom will never be destroyed. -Trust me, those who were intently listening to Jesus every word, understood the exact claim of Messiahship and divinity. -And then He adds to this title: -Mark 2:28 (NLT) So the Son of Man is Lord, even over the Sabbath! -So Jesus says about Himself, that He is the Son of Man Who is Lord over the Sabbath. (2) Lord Over The Sabbath -Talk about Sabbath in two ways:
(1) Intentional Use -The word Sabbath means to cease. -God defined it in the book of Genesis -Genesis 2:1-3 (NLT) So the creation of the heavens and the earth and everything in them was completed. 2 On the seventh day God had finished his work of creation, so he rested from all his work. 3 And God blessed the seventh day and declared it holy, because it was the day when he rested from all his work of creation. -Did God need to rest from His work? -Was He worn out and tired? -No, it was an intentional pause for our benefit (to set a pattern, a rhythm for our lives). -He also emphasized the importance of Sabbath in the 10 Commandments. -Exodus 20:8-11 (NLT) Remember to observe the Sabbath day by keeping it holy. 9 You have six days each week for your ordinary work, 10 but the seventh day is a Sabbath day of rest dedicated to the Lord your God. On that day no one in your household may do any work. This includes you, your sons and daughters, your male and female servants, your livestock, and any foreigners living among you. 11 For in six days the Lord made the heavens, the earth, the sea, and everything in them; but on the seventh day he rested. That is why the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and set it apart as holy. - Keep it holy holy meaning Set apart, unique, different. -In other words, 6 days are for working. 1 day is for resting. Biblical principle. -It's to be a day of reflection upon God, a day of joy, a day of rest in His presence, a day of recuperation, restoration, and worship. -It is physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually healthy! -Not a day of rest apart from God but a day with God (Lord of the Sabbath) -Somehow along the way in our culture, we ve lost this understanding. -Either we don t rest or we rest without God. -Not either/or but both/and. (Vitally important) -And you are going to see how Jesus describes this day in just a moment. --------------------------------------------------------------------- (2) Abused Use -What it had become. -When I was in Israel, I saw a snap shot of what it looked like. -If taking the stairs on Sabbath to your hotel room was considered work and pushing the button on the elevator was considered work, how then do you get to your room? -Special Sabbath elevator that stops at every floor automatically.
-This is just one example: -So you don t have to walk or push buttons which is considered work. -In the Talmud, all the rules and regulations about Sabbath, what you could do and what you couldn t do, were written down (which came after Christ, but the rules existed in His day). -There are 24 chapters of Sabbath laws in the Talmud and one rabbi said he spent two and a half years studying ONE chapter to figure out all the rules in that one chapter. (23 more!) -John MacArthur in one of his commentaries, summarizes the rules in the Talmud in this way: For example, you couldn't travel more than 3,000 feet which equaled 2,000 steps. Some say you can't go more than nineteen hundred and ninety-nine STEPS. If you take the two thousandth step, you've violated Sabbath. This would be from Friday when the sun goes down till Saturday when it goes down. The only way you can go further than that is if you put some food nineteen hundred and ninety-nine steps away on Friday before Sabbath and once you got to the food, you'll get another nineteen hundred and ninety-nine steps. Now wherever there were narrow streets, according to the Talmud, you could lay a piece of wood or a piece of rope over the entrance to the street between the dwellings on each side and you could make the street like the entrance to a house so you could go another three thousand feet or nineteen hundred and ninety-nine steps beyond that. In the Talmud there are 24 chapters of Sabbath laws, things like you could lift something up and put something down, but only from certain places to certain places. You could lift it up in a public place and put it down in a private place, or you could lift it up in a private place and put it down in a public place, or you could lift it up in a wide place and put it in a legally free place and on and on and on. No burden could be carried that weighed more than a dried fig, or half a fig carried two times. If you put an olive in your mouth and rejected it because it was bad, you couldn't put a whole one in the next time because the palate had tasted the flavor of a whole olive. If you threw an object in the air and caught it with the other hand, it was a sin. If you caught it in the same hand, it wasn't. If a person was in one place and he reached out his arm for food and the Sabbath overtook him, he would have to drop the food and not return his arm, or he would be carrying a burden and that would be sin. A tailor couldn't carry his needle. The scribe couldn't carry his pen. A pupil couldn't carry his books. No clothing could be examined lest somehow you find a lice and inadvertently kill it. Wool couldn't be dyed. Nothing could be sold. Nothing could be bought. Nothing could be washed. A letter could not be sent even if it was sent via a heathen. No fire could be lit. Cold water could be poured on warm, but warm couldn't be poured on cold. An egg could not be boiled even if all you did was put it in the sand. You could not bathe for fear when the water fell off of you it might wash the floor. If a candle was lit, you couldn't put it out. If it wasn't lit, you couldn't light it. Chairs couldn't be moved because they might
make a rut. Women couldn't look in a glass or they might find a white hair and be tempted to pull it out. Women couldn't wear jewelry because jewelry weighs more than a dried fig. A radish couldn't be left in salt because it would make it a pickle and that's work. No more grain could be pickled than you could put in a lamb's mouth. You could use only enough ink for two letters, not two written letters, two alphabetic letters. You could have a wad in your ear but you wouldn't put false teeth in your mouth. There were laws about wine, honey, milk, spitting, writing, getting dirt off your clothes, and the list goes on and on. What was forbidden? Sowing, plowing, reaping, binding sheaves, threshing, winnowing, sifting, grinding, kneading, baking, washing wool, beating wool, dying wool, spinning wool, putting on a weaver's beam, making threads, weaving threads, separating threads, making a knot, untying a knot, sewing two stitches...on and on and on. -In other words, what was intended to be a blessing to the people of God became a major curse. -And here in this moment, publicly and openly, Jesus is declaring that He, THE SON OF MAN, is LORD over everything including THE SABBATH. -He has the final say and He has the final authority over what can be done and what can t be done. -Do you think this made the religious leaders who had concocted this system and passed down this system and manipulated this system happy? NO! -Mark 3:6 (NLT) At once the Pharisees went away and met with the supporters of Herod to plot how to kill Jesus. -It wasn t enough to publicly dismiss Him or start a smear campaign to discredit Him. -NO. They wanted Him dead. -Why? What was so important about Sabbath that they wanted Him dead? -He had messed with their oppressive, powerful, political system that held the entire nation in captivity. -What they thought was a system to earn God s favor was nothing of the sort and they had lost the truth about what it was that when Jesus revealed it to them, they could not recognize it. -And what Jesus claimed as a title and description for Himself was a bomb that exploded in their faces. -------------------------------------------------------- -Let me ask you: How does He prove His authority over the Sabbath? -He says it. How does He prove it? (1) The Word of God -Mark 2:23-28 (NLT) One Sabbath day as Jesus was walking through some grainfields, his disciples began breaking off heads of grain to eat. 24 But the Pharisees said to Jesus, Look, why are they breaking the law by harvesting grain on the Sabbath? -Were they breaking the law? NO
-OT, harvest the interior of your field, leaving the edges for foreigners and poor to pick off and eat (not using a tool). (Old Testament welfare system). -Biblical command and principle. -So, they were walking through the field, enjoying the company of Jesus, breaking the heads of grain to eat as they walked with Jesus. 25 Jesus said to them, Haven t you ever read in the Scriptures what David did when he and his companions were hungry? 26 He went into the house of God (during the days when Abiathar was high priest) and broke the law by eating the sacred loaves of bread that only the priests are allowed to eat. He also gave some to his companions. - Haven t you read the Scriptures? Do you not know what David did, the person you so highly revere? -In fleeing from Saul, David and his men were hungry and went to the tabernacle looking for food. -What was available? (Sacred loaves that only the priests can eat). -What s the Biblical point? Mercy, Compassion and Human Need trump ceremony and tradition. 27 Then Jesus said to them, The Sabbath was made to meet the needs of people, and not people to meet the requirements of the Sabbath. -In other words, people are more important that rules. 28 So the Son of Man is Lord, even over the Sabbath! -The Word of God gives Him authority and proves Him right. -What are we to base our lives, our ministries, our churches upon? The Word of God. -Any time you speak to a subject and go farther than what the Scriptures say, you are outside of the will of God. -If what you say or believe contradicts the Word of God it is NOT of God! *Add to it: Legalistic *Take away from it: Anarchistic *Adhere to it: Blessed! -Jesus uses the Word of God to authenticate His authority. ------------------------------------------------------------- -There is something else that authenticates His authority. -Yes, the Word of God but also: (2) The Work He Did -Mark 3:1-6 (NLT) Jesus went into the synagogue again and noticed a man with a deformed hand. -This was more than likely the very next Sabbath after Jesus made that audacious claim. 2 Since it was the Sabbath, Jesus enemies watched him closely. If he healed the man s hand, they planned to accuse him of working on the Sabbath. -How did the man with the deformed hand get into the synagogue? -It is more than likely, that this was a set-up.
-They brought in a man with a physical infirmity (he would not be welcomed in on his own), to see what Jesus would do with him. -Crazy! They knew that Jesus could heal him. Would He heal him on the Sabbath? -Even crazier, they were hoping for Him to break the Sabbath so that they can catch him -Hoping that someone break the law so they can be condemned. law. *If you truly love the Lord, you don t want anyone breaking God s -But this showed the true condition of their heart. 3 Jesus said to the man with the deformed hand, Come and stand in front of everyone. -Sitting in the back which was reserved for people like him, Jesus calls him to the front. -What was going through this man s mind? -Jesus doesn t hide what He s about to do. It is an open declaration. -He is proving His statement: I AM LORD EVEN OVER THE SABBATH -Jesus then asks them a question: 4 Then he turned to his critics and asked, Does the law permit good deeds on the Sabbath, or is it a day for doing evil? Is this a day to save life or to destroy it? But they wouldn t answer him. -They wouldn t answer Him! -Why? They were trapped either way. -(Day for good deed: then heal) (Day for evil deed: expose their evil hearts). 5 He looked around at them angrily and was deeply saddened by their hard hearts. Then he said to the man, Hold out your hand. So the man held out his hand, and it was restored! -In Luke s gospel, it says that He looked at them one by one. -Jesus was angry and Jesus was grieved. -Deeply saddened, in the original language means continual. -His grieving continued and did not go away. -They couldn t see that the shriveled hand of this man represented their shriveled hearts before God. -They couldn t see that the Lord of all Creation, who created the Sabbath and Who is Lord over the Sabbath was right in front of them. -They couldn t see that bringing a deformed man to trap Jesus was USAGE like something with no value to be used and then thrown away. -Instead of bringing people to Jesus to worship Him, they prevented people from coming to the Lord of Life at all. -Instead of worshipping the Lord of the Sabbath, they instead worshipped Sabbath (their manmade rules of what they thought it should be). -And it broke the heart of God...all of it broke His heart.
-Instead of bowing down and worshipping Him after seeing this miracle of healing, their hearts became even harder against Him. 6 At once the Pharisees went away and met with the supporters of Herod to plot how to kill Jesus. ------------------------------------------------------------- -They wanted to kill Jesus because their hearts were already shriveled and dead. -What was it that killed their hearts? THEY REPLACED THE LOVE OF GOD WITH LAWS OF GOD -What does Jesus say, Love the Lord your God...and Love your neighbor as yourself -What does the law require and what does it all point to? Loving God and Loving People -And how do you stay loving God and keep from loving ritual, rules and law? -How does Jesus describe Himself in this passage? What is His title? - LORD -Lord of our affections, Lord of our attention, Lord of our adoration... -He must remain Lord of all. -Bridge Group Questions: (1) What stood out to you about this week s message? (2) What are some of your favorite names in the Bible to describe Jesus? How often do you reflect on the names of Jesus? (3) Because Jesus violated their Sabbath traditions, they sought to put Jesus to death. First of all, what were some of their crazy Sabbath laws? Secondly, what are some of the traditions that people hold to in the church that people are willing to die over? Do you have any? (4) The religious leaders, put God in a box He should do these things and look this way. Do you ever have a tendency to put Jesus in a box? How so? (5) Talk about the idea of Sabbath in your life today. Is the idea of Sabbath new to you, foreign to you, confusing to you? What should Sabbath look like for the saints of God today?