Joel Brooks: Invite you to open your bibles to Luke chapter 6. I think our scripture readers would come forward. Luke chapter 6.
Speaker 2: Chapter 6, verse 1. On a Sabbath, while he was going through the grain fields, his disciples plucked and ate some heads of grain, rubbing them in their hands. But some of the Pharisees said, what are you doing? What is not lawful to do on the Sabbath? And Jesus answered them, have you not read what David did when he was hungry?
He and those who were with him, how he entered the house of God and took and ate the bread of the presence, which is not lawful for any but the priest to eat and also gave it to those with him? And he said to them, the son of man is lord of the Sabbath.
Speaker 3: On another Sabbath, he entered the synagogue and was teaching, and a man was there whose right hand was withered. And the scribes and the Pharisees watched him to see whether he would heal on the Sabbath so that they might find a reason to accuse him. But he knew their thoughts, and he said to the man with a withered hand, come and stand here. And he rose and stood there. And Jesus said to them, I ask you, is it lawful on the Sabbath to do good or to do harm?
To save life or to destroy it? And after looking around at them, all he said to him, stretch out your hand. And he did so, and his hand was restored. But they were filled with fury and discussed with one another what they might do to Jesus.
Speaker 4: Now from Luke chapter 13 verses 10 through 17. Now he was teaching in one of the synagogues on the Sabbath, and there was a woman who had a disabling spirit for 18 years. She was bent over and could not fully straighten herself. When Jesus saw her, he called her over and he said to her, woman, you are freed from your disability. And he laid his hands on her and immediately she was made straight and she glorified God.
But the ruler of the synagogue, indignant because Jesus had healed on the Sabbath, said to the people, there are 6 days in which work ought to be done. Come on those days and be healed and not on the Sabbath day. Then the Lord answered him, you hypocrites, does not each of you on the Sabbath untie his ox or his donkey from the manger and lead it away to water it? And ought not this woman, a daughter of Abraham, who whom Satan bound for 18 years, be loosed from this bond on the Sabbath day? And as he said these things, all his adversaries were put to shame, and all the people rejoiced at all the glorious things that were done by him.
Thanks
Joel Brooks: be to God. If you would pray with me. Lord, we ask that you would honor the very reading of your word. It is not the introduction to the message. It's not something we get out of the way so people can hear me talk.
We believe that through the power of your spirit, your word changes lives, and we ask that that would happen. Now lord, I do ask that you would speak through me. My words are death, but your words are life, and we need life. So father, I ask that my words would fall to the ground and blow away and not be remembered anymore, but lord let your words remain, and may they change us. And I pray this in the strong name of Jesus.
Amen. I have this hammock in my backyard. Lauren gave it to me for my birthday, maybe about 10 years ago. It's a really nice hammock. And for me it represents not rest, but the hope that someday I might rest.
Because I've never actually spent a lazy afternoon in the back yard in 10 years, and laid on it, and just let time go by. But I hope someday too. And so when I see the hammock, I see the possibility the possibility that I will one day rest, and and I'm aware that I long to rest. I really do want to rest. But, you know, then you got children jumping on your back, you know, your house is falling apart, you're gonna get that urgent phone call.
You're gonna do all this and somehow rest seems to always elude me. But I I refuse. It could go to my yard and I refuse to take it down. I refuse because that would be defeat. It's my beacon of hope, that someday I'm gonna have that lazy afternoon.
And I wanna say upfront as we look at rest and the Sabbath rest, that this is something I struggle with. I wanna be very clear about this. This is not I'm not teaching you as, you know, like I'm up on the mountain. I have learned this valuable lesson. Now, let me share with you my wealth of wisdom and experience.
I struggle with this. And this is struggle that I don't think I'm alone in. How many of you go on vacation with the hopes of rest? You know, you go on vacation and and you're gonna spend all of this money, you're gonna travel all of this way, but for us vacation is some of the most stressful time there is. And we're longing just to get back home where we at least have some rest.
How many of you take time off work to rest? But you spend all of your time worrying about what's going on at work. Hard for you to let go of that. You know, you pick up some magazine, or you pick up a book, or turn on the TV and and and the purpose of that is simply just to distract you. To distract you because actually, you really want to be in the office, or you really want to be doing some kind of work there.
But I've I've got to force myself to relax, I've got to force myself to rest, I need a distraction. And then you convince yourself, I rested. I rested. You know, we live probably in the most work driven society that has ever lived, that has ever walked the planet. You know, living in America, especially work defines us.
It defines who we are, and here we have every opportunity in America to get ahead. Every opportunity to advance, and the only thing that's gonna hold you back from advancing is hard work. Are you willing to work harder than the person next to you? If you work harder, if you if you do more, you're going to advance, you're going to make it, you're going to achieve your dreams there. And that all along, it's like this hammock is kind of like the carrot, you know, in front of you.
I'm going to get there if I just work hard enough. In the early 1900, machinery had advanced to the point where people were beginning to discuss the possibility that work, as they knew it, would almost be obsolete. Almost completely gone. Machines were gonna be able to do all of our hard task for us. You know, and then as the auto industry really blossomed and a You know, because what used to take so long to get so you could get there in minutes.
But now, we spend all our time in our cars. Didn't save us any time. People begin taking even longer commutes to work. People dreamed of the work week going down to like 15 to 20 hours once the personal computer really took off. You know, the computer, I mean, that's that's the answer to it all.
It's gonna be reduced work weeks. I mean, there were articles and, you know, in the eighties and the early nineties about we're gonna gain so much free time. You know, families are gonna have longer family meals. You know, we're gonna have all this recreational time and but what happened was the exact opposite. It's true that computers, especially, you know, your personal computers, you can do a lot more work in less time.
So now you just have to do a lot more work in the same amount of time. And now you can't leave work behind. You go home and work follows you. Now you've got a computer and you can do work at home. Now work never leaves your hip, it's always there.
And so now you're never really off work. Rest actually is even more elusive. How can we find rest? This Sabbath rest that Jesus is talking about. Let me be crystal clear, it is not by ceasing to do work.
It's not by just, okay, I'm not going to work. If you think by putting aside all your work, turning off your phones, you know, your computer, Because there's something going on in your heart, some machinery that's there, that wants to keep grinding away, and that's what needs to be addressed. Let's look at this first Sabbath story. Jesus and his disciples are walking through a field on the Sabbath. They're picking up grain, they're kind of rubbing it in their hands, and they're they're eating it.
So the Pharisees confront Jesus, and they ask, why are you breaking the law? And the Pharisees had a whole lot of laws about breaking the Sabbath, because this you won't find that in the Bible that that's breaking the law. But the Pharisees would build what you would they called a hedge around the law. They would have rules upon rules upon rules that you'd have to break before you actually ever got to what's written in scripture. And so they had tons of rules, and, actually many conservative orthodox Jews still keep these.
For instance, the Mishnah, which is a collection of writings by by different rabbis over the years. It states that you can't spit on the ground on the Sabbath. It's a sin to spit on the ground because if you spit on the ground and you happen to walk over it, and maybe your foot goes over and drag some dust over the spit, that's the equivalent of tilling the soil. And you're not allowed to till the soil on the Sabbath, and so just to be careful, you can't spit. You can't turn a light on on the Sabbath because that's the equivalent of lighting a fire.
Let me just read you a couple of selections from the mission that I thought were were fascinating. This one says what you're allowed to do if your house catches on fire or if your synagogue catches on fire. It says if the fire broke out in the night of the Sabbath, you're allowed to save enough food for 3 meals. If it happens in the afternoon, you can only save enough for 1 meal. One rabbi said that, when you're running out, you're allowed to grab as many utensils as you could and shove them in all your pockets as you leave, and then, there was this contrary view that said, no, no, that's way too many.
You are only allowed to take 18 utensils. And so if your house is on fire, grab 8 king. Make sure they're the best 18, put them in, and then you're allowed to run out. And then I love this. It said, and if you find a Gentile, get them to put out the fire, but you don't.
Get the Gentile to. Kind of sounds far fetched, but, at the old church I used to work, and it was next to a Orthodox Jewish synagogue. And, one of their members was in a wheelchair, which posed a problem for them because they weren't allowed to drive on Sunday. And so the rabbi came to me and he asked me, a gentile, if I would come and I would push her to synagogue every Saturday, or find somebody who would, because it's okay for me to break what they saw as the law, but they could not. And so they asked me to do that.
In the missionary, you'll you'll see that you're allowed to pull a calf along a public road, and a woman is allowed to drag her child, as long as the child can put one foot in front of the other. So it can't be like all out drag, but if they're kind of stumbling, you're allowed to jerk your child along. This was one of my favorites. It it talks about, if if you're an an amputee and you have a false leg, are you allowed to walk on it on the Sabbath because that's the equivalent of carrying wood? Not only that, there was the question and this is kinda, you know, splitting hairs, but if it were to catch on fire on the Sabbath, what are you to do?
And they were very divided. You know, are you allowed to to put it out? Are you not allowed to put it out? And and they were divided. In some sense, you find a gentile to put out your leg that's on fire.
And some say, no, you can smother it yourself. But if it's in the house and you're not wearing it, it has to burn. This obviously isn't what the Sabbath is about, and we're not that far removed from some of these things. My mom, she says growing up, you know, when it was Saturday night, she was not allowed to wash her hair. She said, once the sun went down, that was it.
And her mom would cut off the water if she was in mid shower because the Sabbath would be holy. Now in the story here, the Pharisees believe that casually picking up grains and doing this is considered harvesting. And so they're asking Jesus, why are you breaking the law by harvesting? So Jesus reminds them of a story. Well, let me tell you about another law breaker, King David.
You know, King David, he went into the temple and there was the bread of presents there, which nobody is supposed to eat and but David was hungry, and so we ate the bread of presents, broke the law. And I don't think Jesus told the story to the Pharisees, he could have pulled a lot of different stories from the Bible. I don't think this one was just so this is what popped in his his head. Jesus is identifying himself as one of the sons of David, the son of David. So do you know just as David was the rightful king, but some people refused to recognize it, King Saul refused to recognize it, King Saul tried to kill him and David had to go around with his little ragamuffin group.
Look at me. You're refusing to acknowledge me as king. I've got my little band of disciples here and we're roaming around but we know that I am the rightful king and he will go even further and say, I'm actually Lord of the Sabbath. When we read this story in the gospel of Matthew, and we looked at last week, Matthew likes to occasionally add a little phrase, and in Matthew 12, he adds the same phrase, it keeps popping up. I desire mercy, not sacrifice.
In Matthew 12. Matthew records it this way, it says, Jesus responds, and if you had known what this means, I desire mercy not sacrifice, you would have not condemned the guiltless, for the son of man is Lord of the Sabbath. So once again, we hear Jesus say, I desire mercy and not sacrifice. But if you notice, last week He said, Pharisees, go and learn what this means. This time he says, if you had known what it meant that I desire mercy, but not sacrifice.
And it's a condemnation. He's saying, I told you to go and to learn, and you didn't. You didn't take time to think on those words. You cast them aside. I gave you your chance, and you didn't, if you had known what it meant.
The words from Hosea, desire mercy not sacrifice. This would not be a stumbling block to you. But they didn't take the time to learn. Now, the Pharisees were trying really hard to keep the Sabbath. Really hard.
Here's the thing, they were viewing it as work. They're working really hard to keep the Sabbath. They thought that if they worked really hard at trying not to work, then somehow they would be considered righteous. You know, they still took pride. This is how we obey the law.
They're still putting on, like we looked at last week, their moral makeup. Trying to make themselves pretty before God. Look at all I'm doing. Look at all these things I'm doing. Look at all that I'm abstaining from.
God, you owe me. You owe me because I'm living this life. God, if we abstain from this and we try to be really good people, do you at least owe us your blessing? That's how they approach this. And it's crucial if you want to understand this section, you gotta realize Jesus doesn't respond to them by saying, you know what?
The Sabbath doesn't even apply. It's not even relevant anymore. You're you're completely well placed. It's, I abolish the Sabbath. Jesus does that in other places, in which you would say, hey, you've heard Moses say this, the law.
Put that aside because I say to you this. It doesn't say, hey, you've heard about the Sabbath, but I said, no, he doesn't. He doesn't say things like, you know, the ceremonial food laws in which Jesus says, you could put those aside, I declare all food clean. He doesn't just say, alright, here comes the Sabbath. You know what?
It doesn't matter. You know, it's just a ceremonial law. It doesn't he doesn't say that. But he wants them to understand what is the heart of the Sabbath, because that's what they're missing. The mercy not sacrifice.
What is that the heart of the Sabbath? He tells them, he is Lord of the Sabbath. I am the Lord of the Sabbath. And when Jesus makes this claim, first of all, in no uncertain terms is He saying that He is God, because, to be Lord of the Sabbath, the Sabbath was something that was instituted at creation. And so to be Lord of the Sabbath means you're Lord of creation, meaning you are God.
That's why they want to kill Him after this, is because you say you're Lord of the Sabbath is an absolute claim to being God. And then you you see this actually in the text when He heals a man with the withered hand, as we've been saying all through Luke, Jesus would lay hands on people to heal them. But not this man. He doesn't. Because he wants to show his Lord of the Sabbath.
Lord of creation, the one who speaks things into existence, Who speaks, you know, let there be light. Boom, there's light. Let there be plants. Boom, there's plants. Let there be animals.
Boom, there's animals. So now he looks at this man and he just says, stretch out your hand. He doesn't touch him. He doesn't lay hands on him. He just speaks like the Lord of the Sabbath would, and the man is healed.
He's the Lord of creation. And by saying that Jesus, when he says he is lord of the sabbath, He's not just saying He's the Lord of creation, He He's also saying that He is the fulfillment of the Sabbath. He's the one into which the the Sabbath ultimately points. He's not abolishing the Sabbath. He's showing the true meaning of the Sabbath, which is me.
Turn in your Bibles to Genesis 2. Let's look at the Sabbath, when it first appears to us, Genesis 2. Just read a few verses here. Takes me 10 minutes to find Genesis. Genesis 2 verse 1 through 3.
Thus, the heavens and the earth were finished and all the host of them. And on the 7th day, God finished His work that He had done, and He rested on the 7th day from all His work that He had done. So God blessed the 7th day and made it holy because on it, God rested from all his work that he had done in creation. Now you need to understand that God did not rest on the 7th day because he was tired. Now, he was just kinda tired from working, he really needed to sit back, rejuvenate himself, get creative juices flowing again.
He's not exhausted after a hard week of work. That's that's not God. Hebrew scholar, Alan Ross, he says that, the word Sabbath or the word rest here, and I quote, is not the remedying of exhaustion after a tiring week. Rather, it describes the enjoyment of an accomplishment. The celebration of completion.
It's the enjoyment of an accomplishment, it's the celebration of completion. And so you see this, after every day God creates something and He says, it is good. He makes the stars and God says, it is good. You know, He makes the plants and He says, it is good. He makes the animals and He says, it is good.
He makes man and He says, it's very good. And what he does is after he makes all this, is he sits back and he goes, man it's finished. And it's beautiful. And he enjoys his completed work. He's resting.
He's enjoying the beautiful things that he has made and acknowledging there's no need to add anything. It's done. Absolutely the way I want it. And the reason that keeping the Sabbath is so hard, for a lot of us here, it's hard for me, is that we don't see the work of God as finished. We don't see the work of God as finished.
We don't trust God in His completed work. We believe that somehow we're still lacking. That, that we still need to, to do something, something still needs to be added for us to justify our existence, before we can finally rest. We still have that one more work to do. We're still trying to prove ourselves to other people, prove that we matter, prove that we're beautiful.
And so we work, and we work, and we work because we are not trusting God's word when he says it's finished, it's completed, it's beautiful. Inside, we feel that we're incomplete. Now, the result of this The reason for this failure in us is the fall. Now work I I need to be clear, work is not a result of the fall. You know, there was work in paradise, work is a gift from God, but now the way that we approach work after we ascend, is totally different.
Now we approach work as a way to show that we matter. To show people, look what I've done, I am important. See, here it is. It becomes a way of finding our identity. And so, you got to understand that this view that we now have a work, I like to call it the inner machinery.
It's this machinery that drives us, and it's what we have inherited from Adam and from Eve. And so when we cease to understand that God says, He saw us, He saw this work and He says, it is good, We're gonna strive as hard as we can to hear those words from others. When you no longer hear God saying, it is good in your life, you're gonna strive as hard as you can to hear those words from others. You're gonna put in ridiculously long hours to work harder and harder and harder, so your boss will look at you and say, You've done good. You did good.
I recognize that. And you're building, Yes, I am somebody. My, my boss has said that this was good. Or as a parent, you're gonna make sure your kid's act perfect in public. That you you want them to be absolutely perfect in public so other people look at it and go, wow, you were such a good parent.
Because you want to hear them say, you're good. Or if you're a stay at home mom, you're gonna, you know, strive to have your home immaculate. Your children perfectly obedient. Your dinners are always gonna be amazing. Your hair is gonna be perfect and and somehow, you gotta do it with this air of ease.
Because you want people to look at you and say, Wow. She's amazing. She is so good. Because when God says it's complete and it's good, that's not enough for you. You need to hear it from others, and this drives you.
This machinery drives you. And you can't rest. And so God puts a Sabbath in our life, and and I read one commentary, I love it, it said, as a way of violently stopping this drive. Once a week it hits us, and it's like, gotta stop. Gotta remember, God says it's good.
I need to rest in God's finished work. When we work, we remind ourselves that our existence is dependent not upon our work, but on God's work. We remind ourselves that God's the one who keeps the world revolving, not us. God's sovereign, we're not. And it also reminds us that we are ultimately, we are dependent upon grace and not our hard work.
Deuteronomy 515 it's the 2nd place that we find the 10 Commandments in scripture. And, and there's actually an additional phrase when it introduces the Sabbath, and I love it. God says, you shall remember that you were a slave in the land of Egypt. And the Lord your God brought you out from there with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm. Therefore, the lord your god commanded you to keep the Sabbath.
So you wanna understand why you keep the Sabbath. You wanna understand the importance of the Sabbath. You gotta understand that you were slaves, but God has set you free from something. Free to now enjoy the Sabbath. So to honor the Sabbath is to recognize God's salvation.
It's to recognize that God has set you free from this meaningless work. Free from your slavery, and and to not be a Sabbath minded people, is to place yourself back into bondage. The bondage of work. Sabbath is a celebration. It's a joyful celebration which we're reminded that God has set us free from things that used to hold us into bondage, the things that hold the world into bondage.
It's a gift. That's why we read the passage in Luke 13 about that woman, and Jesus said, this woman has been in bondage for 18 years. Doesn't it make sense that she would be freed on the Sabbath? Because that's what the Sabbath represents. Freedom from bondage.
Now, we need to understand when Jesus says that he's lord of the Sabbath, he's not only saying that he's the one who created the Sabbath, and he's not only saying he's the lord of creation, but he's saying he is ultimately the one whom the Sabbath points. He's where you find rest. And this is why he says, come to me all you who are weary and heavy laden. I will give you rest. That's why Paul says in his letter to the Colossians, the Sabbath is a shadow of things to come.
The substance belongs to Christ. And so when Jesus cried out from the cross, it is finished, or it is completed. The work is done. He's saying that once again, God's work, now His work in redemption is completed. You don't have to add to it.
You're not to add, you add to it, you run it. It's done. And now we can find satisfaction in that. He's paid this debt. He's done the work that we cannot do.
And I love it, the author of Hebrews says that after He did this, He ascended to heaven and then He sat down. He does His work once again. He does it, he pays the penalty, he says, it is finished, and then he goes, he sits down, he rests. And what he's in doing is he's enjoying the salvation that he has brought to us. He's enjoying this completed work.
Yeah. I think that a weekly Sabbath, a way you can think about it is kind of like the Lord's supper. Kind of like communion. Something commanded by the Lord for us to do, in order to remember the finished work of Jesus. Now it's crucial for you to understand the reasons why we have this Sabbath before trying to force yourself to start taking Sabbaths.
Otherwise, you're gonna miss the whole thing, you're just gonna cease working, But your soul won't have rest. We rest on the Sabbath in order to remind ourselves that Christ has finished the workforce. I began by telling you how hard this has been for me. You know, Friday is my Sabbath. Sunday isn't.
Sunday is my longest work day. And so it's not my Sabbath, Friday is. Now this Friday, this this week has, I would probably say, has been the worst week of ministry in my life. It has been the most demanding, different things have kept popping up wave after wave, and and so it comes to Friday, and I am so tempted to study. I I I mean, I want so bad just just to read and to study, and I realize it's ironic.
I want to study about the Sabbath so I can teach people about how to take a Sabbath and not work on the Sabbath. And I'm realizing, but I want to work on the Sabbath so I can teach about the Sabbath. And I realized it was just awful, and so I was like, I'm not doing that. I'm not, Lord help this be an act of worship. I don't need to stand in front of people to hear them say, that was good.
That's not where my identity is. Lord, remind me of this as I take this Sabbath. I don't My identity is not built on that. And God, I recognize that if anything is to happen, it happens from your sovereign hand, not from my hard work. And I'm going to take this Sabbath as a way of reminding me of that.
And so my Friday became worship. It became a time when God deepened trust, showered grace. Now realize because of this machinery we have in us, taking the Sabbath, it's going to be hard for you. Practically, it might mean that you don't advance like you would like in your job career, because there will be others who put in more hours and work harder than you. That's okay because that's their idol, that's their God.
But they won't know the joy of a Sabbath rest. It might also mean that you have to let some things go. I'd actually have to say no to some people. Just occasionally just say no. I love it when people ask me to do some things and I say no, and they wait for the reason why.
And I just kind of look at them, like, why not? Just no. No. I'm not your savior. My identity is not built on your approval of me at this moment.
For some of you, it's going to be hard because you've built your existence on achievement for so long. And saying no to people is gonna be hard because your identity is built on doing things for other people, and them saying, you are so good. So good. But when your identity is built on the finished work of Jesus, you can find rest. God says he blessed the Sabbath.
He blessed them. If you look all throughout scripture, when God blesses something, blessing means that there is joy, there's a, a keener awareness of his presence, and he blessed the Sabbath. So when we honor him by taking a Sabbath, there is a blessing in that. We have more sense of his presence, we have a greater joy if we enter into that time as an act of worship. Something that I'm learning and I hope that us as a church comes to embrace.
As we understand the finished work of Jesus. Pray with me. Lord, right now, we quiet ourselves before you. We've got all this inner machinery, it's so performance driven, that's so sacrifice driven. We wanna do things to win approval, win your approval.
I want so desperately to hear, it's completed, it's good. God, I ask through your spirit, they would realize that we don't want to ultimately hear those words from our boss, from our friends, from anyone. We want to hear those words from you and understand what you mean when you say that your work is completed. We trust in that. So Lord, we come to you weary, and we ask that we would find rest for our souls.
We pray this in the name of Jesus. Amen.