Ten Minute Bible Talks Devotional Bible Study - Should Christians Sabbath? No. | Questions You're Asking | Luke 4.16-21

Starting point is 00:00:00 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 answering questions that you're asking. A lot of these are coming from our Facebook page. So if you follow 10-minute Bible Talks on Facebook, you can ask questions that you want us to answer or vote on questions that other people are asking. Before we start today, I want to invite you to a couple online classes that Patrick and I are going to, going to be teaching this fall. If you sign up, you can join us live for the class, and everyone

Starting point is 00:00:39 who signs up will receive a recording of the class afterwards. Let me tell you the two classes that we're offering. The first one is, who would Jesus vote for? Over three weeks, we're going to answer some of the hot political questions and reflect on what faithfulness to Jesus looks like in such politically polarized times. The second class is a women's Bible study class called skilled at life. It's a four-week journey through Proverbs in which we look at topics like communication, friendship, finances, and parenting. I hope you'll sign up for one or both. Our hope is that they would help you follow Jesus this fall. Today we're going to have some fun. We're going to answer the question, should Christians practice the Sabbath? And I think it's

Starting point is 00:01:27 going to be fun because Patrick has taken the opposite position that I have, and he's laid out his case in a previous episode. And if you haven't listened to it yet, I think you should so that you can hear the wrong perspective. Of course, I'm just kidding. I'm sure that Patrick has made a compelling argument. But I do think he's wrong. But before we can get into that and why I think the Bible teaches that we should not practice the Sabbath today, at least not in the same way that the people in the Old Testament did. I think we have to define what we mean by Sabbath. So when we ask this question, should Christians practice the Sabbath? Here's what I think we're asking. Should Christians set aside one day a week, preferably Sunday, to abstain from work and other normal activities so that they

Starting point is 00:02:20 can devote it to worship and rest? And if that's the question we're asking, I think the answer is no. and that's a change for me. I was always uneasy about the Sabbath, but I tried to preach it, and I tried. Very imperfectly, often pathetically, I tried to practice it, at least some sort of Sabbath, because I thought that's what the Bible taught. But when I read N.T. Wright, a British New Testament scholar on this issue, I changed my mind. New information led to a new position. let me share with you some of what I've learned.

Starting point is 00:03:00 First, don't you think it's odd that the Apostle Paul, a very Jewish man steeped in the Hebrew scriptures, said nothing about the Sabbath? Nothing. But it gets even more interesting when you realize that Paul discusses the Ten Commandments, but every time he does so, he very intentionally avoids mentioning the Sabbath. I know one of Patrick's arguments is that, that the Sabbath is part of the Ten Commandments and that those commandments are binding on us today. But if that's the case, why does Paul reaffirm nine of the Ten Commandments, but never reaffirm the Sabbath?

Starting point is 00:03:41 Well, what is the purpose of the Sabbath? In order to understand the purpose, we have to follow the storyline of the Bible. And that means starting all the way back at the beginning of Genesis, where Sabbath is first mentioned. In Genesis 2 we read that after God created in six days, he rested on the seventh. God's resting doesn't mean he took a nap. When it says God rested, it means that he took up residence in his temple. He was sitting maybe in the control room of the world that he had just made. The whole earth was God's temple.

Starting point is 00:04:16 And God enjoyed the world that he had made. He sat there in his temple and he ran. the world. That's what it means for God to rest. He took up residence in his temple. Adam and Eve were created in God's image. And so it's not a big surprise that just like God, they were called to rest to enjoy God in the temple of his creation. Now the rest of Genesis really says nothing at all about the Sabbath, but then it makes a reappearance in the other books of the Pentateuch, which are just the first five books of the Bible. Sabbath is one of the Ten Commandments, and then additional commands are given about what can and can't be done on the

Starting point is 00:05:04 Sabbath, and Israel is instructed to give a Sabbath to those who worked for them. Once you get outside of the Pentateuch, the rest of the Old Testament, talks some, but not much about the Sabbath. And when it does talk about the Sabbath, it's only to say that people are or are not keeping it. Usually the Sabbath issue arises when Israel is living in close proximity to their pagan neighbors. The Sabbath is supposed to mark God's people as different from others. In that sense, it's like circumcision or the dietary food laws. The Sabbath also included an element of justice. On the seventh day, Saturday, the people, including servants and animals, were to rest. The Sabbath occurred once every seven days, and Sabbath years once every seven years, and every seven Sabbath years, or 49 years, was the day of

Starting point is 00:06:05 Jubilee. Jubilee was a day of justice in which all the land would be returned to the family who originally owned it, indentured servants would be released. In Isaiah 61, the Jubilee is described, as a time to give liberty to the captives and sight to the blind. Jubilee was a reminder that one day God had promised he would come and establish his kingdom on earth. So the Sabbath is more than resting from work one day a week. It appears that the Sabbath pointed toward a time that God will bring justice and liberation to the earth. Like sacrifices pointed to Jesus, who was the ultimate sacrifice, Well, Sabbath pointed to Jesus, who is the ultimate rest, the ultimate king. Then we get to the New Testament, where, as I've already mentioned, nine of the Ten commandments

Starting point is 00:06:58 are reaffirmed, but the exception is the Sabbath. That doesn't mean the New Testament never talks about the Sabbath, because of course, Jesus talked with the Pharisees a lot about it. In fact, Jesus turned the Jewish idea of the Sabbath upside down by healing people and saying, saying the Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath. All this infuriated the Jewish leadership so much that they started to plot to kill Jesus. Now, why is Jesus doing this? Why is he turning the first century Jewish conception of the Sabbath upside down? I don't think it's because he's trying to move away from the Old Testament or because he's emphasizing grace over law.

Starting point is 00:07:46 I don't think that at all. I think what Jesus is doing is that he is announcing that he is the fulfillment of the Sabbath. So we don't need animal sacrifices anymore because Jesus is the ultimate sacrifice. We don't need to worship at the temple anymore because Jesus is the place God dwells. We don't need dietary food laws. We are no longer mandated to practice circumcision as a part of our faith. longer need to practice the Sabbath because Jesus is the fulfillment of what the Sabbath pointed to. So you remember that the Sabbath and the Jubilee are linked together and they point toward a time that God will bring justice and heal the whole world. Well, in Luke 4, Jesus says that he is the Jubilee. Israel's history has reached its ultimate Jubilee, the freedom and peace and rest found in Jesus.

Starting point is 00:08:45 The Sabbath was a sign pointing to the time when the Messiah would come and God's time would intersect with ours. The Sabbath was a signpost telling the world that one day the Messiah would come and liberate people from slavery. When Jesus came, the signs announcing his coming were no longer needed. All that the Sabbath pointed to is found in Jesus, and now he has arrived. Jesus said, come to me, all of you who are weary, and I will give you rest. So all this explains why the Apostle Paul doesn't really ever explicitly mention the Sabbath and nowhere calls Christians to keep the Sabbath. There's no need now that the Messiah, the one the Sabbath pointed to, has come.

Starting point is 00:09:38 Now, in Romans 14, Paul might very well be talking about the Sabbath, when he says there are some days that some people keep as special and some don't, and that difference of opinion is okay. He says, follow your conscience. Some Jews in the Roman church wanted to keep the Sabbath day holy, and Gentiles, or at least some of them, didn't think that was necessary. Paul gives them the freedom to decide, but says that what is more important than keeping a day special is loving your brother or sister in the church, loving your neighbor. Now, Jesus' resurrection occurred on Sunday, and Paul clearly expected the churches to meet on that day.

Starting point is 00:10:25 Every Sunday that the Christians gathered was, in a sense, an acknowledgement that Jesus had risen from the dead. It became known as the Lord's Day. Now, here's something that's really interesting. In the ancient world, Sunday was a normal working day. Christians gathered early in the morning to worship Jesus, and then they went to work just like everyone else. If the traditional Sabbath day rest had been transferred from Saturday, the seventh day, to Sunday, the first day of the week, can you imagine that happening? I mean, just ask yourself if Jews would have worked on the Sabbath.

Starting point is 00:11:06 Of course they wouldn't. something new is happening Christians met, they worshipped the risen Savior early in the morning, and then they went to work with their fellow citizens. Now look, I am not trying to say that human beings don't need rest. Of course we do. And I believe that there is a sense of justice in giving that rest not only to ourselves, but to our employees, even the animals, as the animals, as the Old Testament Sabbath did. If this question was, should people work at a frenetic pace all the time just to produce and consume and accumulate more?

Starting point is 00:11:48 Well, that's an easy answer. The answer to that question is no. But that's not the question that we started with. We asked the question, should Christians keep the Sabbath day? Should Christians set aside a day of the week, preferably Sunday, and devote that day to worship, and refrain from work. And based on what I've seen from NT Wright and what we see in the storyline in the Bible,

Starting point is 00:12:15 I think the answer to that question is no. We don't practice a Sabbath day because Jesus is the fulfillment of what the Sabbath pointed to. Jesus is our Sabbath rest. That's true every day. Thanks for listening. If you've enjoyed this content, please subscribe and give us a rating.

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Ten Minute Bible Talks Devotional Bible Study - Should Christians Sabbath? No. | Questions You're Asking | Luke 4.16-21

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