Ten Minute Bible Talks Devotional Bible Study - Remembering the Sabbath | Learning to Follow Jesus | Luke 6.6-11

Episode Date: March 4, 2020

"And here's what's crazy. Jesus treating the Sabbath as a day for blessing and giving life and freeing people, that led the Pharisees and teachers to want to kill him. Why?" Jesus broke the traditional Sabbath rules and observances, so does that mean the Sabbath doesn't matter anymore? It sounds like such an outdated thing from the early books of the Old Testament. Don't Sunday sermons replace the Sabbath? Inspired by Luke 6.6-11, https://www.thecrossingchurch.com/staff/patrick-miller/ (Patrick) revisits what the Sabbath was really supposed to be about. Discover what he learned in this episode as we continue our series on https://www.thecrossingchurch.com/podcast-series/how-to-follow-jesus/ (Learning to Follow Jesus). Interested in more content like this? Listen to https://www.thecrossingchurch.com/podcasts/timeout-learning-when-and-how-to-take-a-timeout-learning-to-follow-jesus-luke-5-15-16/ (Timeout! Learning When and How to Take a Timeout). Also, be sure to check out Keith's sermon https://www.thecrossingchurch.com/media-feeds/why-are-you-so-busy/ (Why Are You So Busy) from our https://www.thecrossingchurch.com/series/genesis/ (Genesis series). Struggling to fit the Sabbath into your busy life and full schedule? https://info.thecrossingchurch.com/rest-and-recovery-daily-devotionals (Sign up) for this free, 10-day email devotional to help reset and restore your soul. To learn more, visit our https://www.thecrossingchurch.com/ (website) and follow us on https://www.facebook.com/TheCrossingCOMO (Facebook), https://www.facebook.com/TheCrossingCOMO (Instagram), and https://twitter.com/thecrossingcomo (Twitter) @TheCrossingCOMO.  Your support makes TMBT possible. Ten Minute Bible Talks is a crowd-funded project. Join the TMBTeam to reach more people with the Bible. Give now.

Welcome to 10-minute Bible Talks, where we connect the Bible to your life and the time it takes to get to work. I'm Patrick Miller. And I'm Keith Simon. Right now, we're learning what it looks like to follow Jesus by working our way through the gospel of Luke. Sabbath is not something people talk much about these days. Our English word Sabbath transliterates a Hebrew word Shabbat, which simply means to stop. And in the Hebrew tradition, the Sabbath was a weekly day to stop working. a weekly day of rest for everyone, even their animals included. It was a day to set down work, to worship God, to enjoy God, and to enjoy all the good things in his creation.

In the story of the Old Testament, the first Sabbath is actually right on the first page of the Bible, which probably says something about its importance. God creates all creation. And then what does God do? He takes a Sabbath day, a day of rest. One author, John Mark Combs, notes that God blesses the Sabbath day. Now here's what's interesting about that. The only other things that God blesses on the first page of the Bible are animals and humans. And what is that blessing for? Well, the blessing is specifically for the purpose of generating life. They're blessed so that they can produce offspring. So what's the Sabbath day blessed for? Well, John Mark Comer says it's blessed to give life. The Sabbath Day is blessed as a life-giving day, as a day where God, if you rest, gives supernatural life

to those who are doing the resting. The idea of Sabbath was also interwoven into Israel's origin story. So the story of the Exodus. You see, God, he rescues his people from slavery, a life without stopping, a life without rest. And one of the first laws that he gives them, the fourth one, actually, was to observe a weekly day of rest. Now, just put yourself, into their mind space, being a slave, working seven days a week, all of your life until your body broke. And then one day you were rescued by a king who doesn't merely offer rest but commands it. It would have been a great day of liberation, great news of liberation. The funny thing is that today, most Christians, myself included, don't think about Sabbath as

a life-giving reality. We don't think about it as a day of liberation. Instead, we tend to to just think about it as a kind of rule, forcing us to stop doing the things that we think we need to get done as a kind of proof that we trust God with them. We see Sabbath as a rule to keep God's good favor, not as a life-giving, richly blessed, liberating day of rest. I suspect that it would surprise the earliest Christians to hear this. Because do you know who else saw the Sabbath as a rule just to keep God's good favor? Well, it wasn't the early Christians. It was the Pharisees. But do you know who saw the Sabbath as a life-giving, richly blessed, liberating day of rest?

Well, it was Jesus. Let's just read this story from Luke 6. On another Sabbath, Jesus went into the synagogue and was teaching, and a man was there whose right hand was shriveled. The Pharisees and the teachers of the law were looking for a reason to accuse Jesus, so they watched him closely to see if he would heal on the Sabbath. But Jesus knew that they were thinking this and said to the man with a shriveled hand, get up and stand in front of everyone. So he got up and stood there. Then Jesus said to them,

I ask you, which is lawful on the Sabbath? To do good or to do evil? To save life or to destroy it. He looked at them and then said to the man, stretch out your hand. He did so. And his hand was completely restored. But the Pharisees and the teachers of the law were furious and began to discuss with one another what they might do to Jesus. Jesus saw the Sabbath as a life-giving, richly blessed, liberating day of rest. And he used his life-giving power to bring this reality into the foreground. That's what he's doing when he heals the man on the Sabbath. He's saying, what's the Sabbath for? It's a day of healing. It's a day of giving life. And here's what's crazy. Jesus treating the Sabbath as a day for blessing and giving life and freeing people. That led the Pharisees and teachers to want to kill

him. Why? Well, in the story, it's because Jesus was subverting their rules. Jesus was subverting their authority. He was questioning all the rules and regulations that they had put around the Sabbath. They were angry at Jesus because Jesus wasn't thinking about the Sabbath as a rule. He was thinking about the Sabbath as a day for life. I find all of this interesting because today, we often respond to Jesus' view of the Sabbath with some distaste. Okay, maybe it doesn't make us want to kill Jesus like the Pharisees, but many of us simply find the idea of resting, setting down work, worshiping God, enjoying His creation. Well, we just find that impractical, if not impossible. I'm speaking for myself here. I remember when I was in seminary full-time and working in ministry full-time,

I never felt like I had any time at all to rest. If there wasn't work, do, there was school work to do. If there wasn't school work to do, well, there was housework to do. And if by some small miracle there wasn't any housework to do, the only kind of rest I wanted was the fake, non-worshipful rest of mindless entertainment or online shopping or social media. You probably feel the same way, don't you? Something funny ended up happening to me, though. I am a bit of a perfectionist, and so I always did all of my extra credit assignments in class. And one of those assignments was to follow the laws of Leviticus for an entire week. Do you know what that means? I had to take a real Sabbath to do my extra credit.

Now, at first it felt impossible. I didn't know what to do with myself. I was bored. I wasn't practiced in worshipping by myself. I certainly wasn't practiced in worshiping with my family. I wasn't practiced at enjoying good things, like taking a nap or a meal with loved ones, or quietly reading a book, giving my child my full attention. But by the end of just one day, I experienced something tremendous. Blessing, life, fullness. And I knew, I knew I had to do this Sabbath thing again, not as an empty rule, but as a life-giving rule,

as a way of receiving God's blessing and God's energy for the week to come. Truth be told, I did it for years in seminary in fits and spurts. It wasn't perfect. And eventually, I fell out of the day. the habit. But recently, I've been trying to start over, and I found the same thing to be true. The Sabbath is a life-giving gift from Jesus that renews my shriveled heart and shriveled mind, and that brings life out of death, light out of darkness. Whether or not we think Jesus commands or fulfills the Sabbath, that's not the point of this podcast. The principle of rest, and the value of

rest is woven into the fiber of creation, you and me included. And in today's world, I'm not sure we can enjoy that without taking off a whole day. Whether or not you do or don't take off a whole day, the point is broader. We need a principle of rest. We need a principle of Sabbath in our lives because God has richly blessed the Sabbath as a life-giving day for liberation and freedom. How is Jesus calling you to find life in the Sabbath? What would it take for you to set aside the lie that we need constant work and constant

production more than we need God's life-giving, richly blessed, liberating day of rest. Thanks for listening. If you've enjoyed this content, please subscribe and give us a rating. That helps other people find this podcast more easily. Also, ask yourself, who could you share this podcast with? Texting an episode to a friend or a family member is a great way to help them grow spiritually. If you want to go deeper, check out our show notes for for book recommendations.