Relax: God’s Got This (Part 3)

Message Date: October 23, 2022
Bible

The Practical’s of Sabbath

Review:

  • Big rocks = main priorities or longer-term goals. (Vision for your life, sustainability, date nights, intimacy with your spouse, time with your family, exercise, eating habits, spending habits)
  • Little rocks = day-to-day responsibilities and shorter-term goals. (Band, homework, chores,  brushing your teeth, mowing the yard, dinner)
  • Sand = minor tasks that are not really that important. (Errands, etc.)
  • Water = the unimportant distractions that prevent you from getting work done.( social media , tv, games and entertainment )

Sabbath is a big rock (long term health, sustainability). If we don’t make room for Sabbath, it will get left out, and we CAN’T do without it.

If what you call rest doesn’t energize you for the other things in your life it’s not rest. It’s amusement.

Strong’s Definitions: שָׁבַת shâbath, shaw-bath’; a primitive root; to repose, i.e. desist from exertion.

Sabbath= rest.

And he said unto them, The sabbath was made for man, and not man for the sabbath: therefore the Son of man is Lord also of the sabbath.
Mark 2:27-28 (KJV)

Sabbath isn’t a regulation we are expected to comply with, it’s a requirement we are created with.

God’s Original Intentions for Man are His Eternal Intentions

Sin makes us run from God, but he pursued us anyway.
He protects us – He doesn’t reject us.

      1. Dominion
      2. To partake of and enjoy all that God has provided
      3. Rest and fellowship with God
      4. To dress and keep it. Responsibility (rest comes before responsibility)

Sabbath isn’t about legalism.

Legalism vs. License
Legalism says “it has to be exactly like this”
License says “we don’t need that any more”

Faith is a Rest

For we who have believed do enter that rest, as He has said:
“So I swore in My wrath,
They shall not enter My rest,”
although the works were finished from the foundation of the world.
Hebrews 4:3 (NKJV)

There is a daily application of sabbath rest.

There are, it may be, so many kinds of voices in the world, and none of them is without signification.
1 Corinthians 14:10 (KJV)

    1. One minute pause
    2. Practice Benevolent detachment
    3. Unplugging

“There’s a difference between unplugging (not doing anything or doing things that bring no value) and recharging. (Doing things that bring value and refreshment/strength to you)” -Melissa Harper.

The Spirit of the Law and NOT the Letter

But now we have been delivered from the law, having died to what we were held by, so that we should serve in the newness of the Spirit and not in the oldness of the letter.
Romans 7:6 (NKJV)

Jesus lived by the Spirit of the law, not the letter (He touched lepers)

And He said to them, “The Sabbath was made for man, and not man for the Sabbath.
Mark 2:27 (NKJV)

    • Sabbath was made for man. It was meant for our good.
    • God knows we’re dust/fragile. He knows that we need to have one day of rest in seven.
      For He knows our frame; He remembers that we are dust.
      Psalms 103:14 (NKJV)
    • God never intended the Sabbath to become a burden but that’s what the religious leaders of Jesus’ day had done.
    • They made that day seem to everyone to be like a camel that’s been weighed down by every possible weight imaginable.
    • They had added hundreds of other manmade traditions, which they considered to be equal to -or in some cases, greater- than the law, even though they were not in the original Sabbath command.
    • This was exactly the opposite of what God had intended for the Sabbath.

So the Son of Man is Lord even of the Sabbath.
Mark 2:28 (NIV)

Jesus Created the Sabbath

All things were made through Him, and without Him nothing was made that was made.
John 1:3 (NKJV)

For by Him all things were created that are in heaven and that are on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or principalities or powers. All things were created through Him and for Him.
Colossians 1:16 (NKJV)

    • Isn’t someone who created something the owner of it?  Can’t they do whatsoever they please with it?  In this way, Jesus, has every right to do whatever He pleases with the Sabbath, That’s why Jesus said that He was Lord of the Sabbath.
    • The word the Lord uses denotes sovereign rights and ownership, so who can tell Jesus what He can and what He cannot do on the Sabbath?
    • Jesus often rebuked the religious leaders of the day because they were making the Sabbath something that no one could possibly keep (at least according to their own self-righteous standards.)

Doing Good on the Sabbath

And behold, there was a man who had a withered hand. And they asked Him, saying, “Is it lawful to heal on the Sabbath?”—that they might accuse Him.
Matthew 12:10 (NKJV)

    • Notice it wasn’t because they cared for the man but they only wanted to accuse Him.
      Then he said to them, “Is it lawful on the Sabbath to do good or to do harm, to save life or to kill?” But they were silent.
      Mark 3:4 (NKJV)
      Then Jesus answered “Which one of you who has a sheep, if it falls into a pit on the Sabbath, will not take hold of it and lift it out? Of how much more value is a man than a sheep! So it is lawful to do good on the Sabbath.”  Then he said to the man, “Stretch out your hand.” And the man stretched it out, and it was restored, healthy like the other.
      Matt 12:11-13 (ESV)
    • You would think they’d celebrate that someone was healed.
      But the Pharisees went out and conspired against him, how to destroy him.
      Matt 12:14 (ESV)
    • How hard hearted can you be?!  They wanted to destroy Him because He healed on the Sabbath even though the Sabbath law gave allowance for merciful acts for animals… but not humans!?
    • 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.
      Mark 3:5 (NIV)

Acts of Mercy on the Sabbath

Jesus went through the grainfields on the Sabbath. His disciples were hungry and began to pick some heads of grain and eat them.
Matt 12:1 (ESV)

    • What was the reaction of the Pharisees?
      But when the Pharisees saw it, they said to him, “Look, your disciples are doing what is not lawful to do on the Sabbath.”
      Matt 12:2 (ESV)
    • God always puts mercy above sacrifice, and in this case the supposed sacrifice that the Pharisees took on their keeping the Sabbath, which is why Jesus said:
      And if you had known what this means, “I desire mercy, and not sacrifice,’ you would not have condemned the guiltless. For the Son of Man is lord of the Sabbath.”
      Matt 12:7-8 (ESV)
    • The law allowed for acts of mercy on the Sabbath for animals and certainly for people and they must have known that, so Jesus chastised them by telling them they’re:
      “Thus making void the word of God by your tradition that you have handed down. And many such things you do”
      Mark 7:13 (ESV)
      Then He asked them, “If one of you has a child or an ox that falls into a well on the Sabbath day, will you not immediately pull it out?”
      Luke 14:5 NIV
    • No wonder Jesus was often angry at their coldness of heart.  They cared nothing for acts of mercy; they only wanted others to keep their own self-righteous traditions, which they made equal to -or greater- than the actual Sabbath Law given.

Jesus answered and said to them, “I did one work, and you all marvel. Moses therefore gave you circumcision (not that it is from Moses, but from the fathers), and you circumcise a man on the Sabbath. If a man receives circumcision on the Sabbath, so that the law of Moses should not be broken, are you angry with Me because I made a man completely well on the Sabbath? Do not judge according to appearance, but judge with righteous judgment.
John 7:21-24 (NKJV)

Stand fast therefore in the liberty by which Christ has made us free, and do not be entangled again with a yoke of bondage.
Galatians 5:1 (NKJV)