Tag Archives: Sabbath

God-Killers

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GOD KILLERS 

“For this reason they tried all the more to kill Him; not only was He breaking the Sabbath but He was even calling God His own Father, making Himself equal with God.” John 5:18 (NIV).

Did these religious leaders also look forward to the coming of the Messiah? Judging by their attitude to Jesus, I think not. Jesus’ disciples certainly anticipated His coming even though their idea of what He would do completely missed the mark. They thought He was coming to deliver them from Roman domination and set up His kingdom in Israel to revive David’s rule.

It does not seem like the Pharisees had even that hope. They were in cahoots with the Romans and had altogether too cushy a life to want it to be disturbed by anyone claiming to be God’s Messiah. The idea that He was actually the Son of God outraged them and sowed murderous thoughts in their minds. This man had to be silenced before He made too many waves among the Romans and among the people.

“Jesus gave them this answer: ‘Very truly I tell you, the Son can do nothing by Himself; He can do only what He sees His Father doing, because whatever the Father does the Son also does. For the Father loves the Son and shows Him all He does. Yes, and He will show Him even greater works than these so that you will be amazed…'” John 5:19-20 (NIV).

We can be very grateful for the altercations Jesus had with the Pharisees because we learn more about Him and His relationship with the Father from these than we do from any other source in the gospels. He speaks here of an intimacy and a unity with the Father that gives us a glimpse into the relationship between the Father and the Son in the Trinity. Later on during another argument with His opponents He said, ‘I and the Father are one.’

There are sects that deny the Trinity because they do not understand the nature of the Trinity. Jesus was not claiming to be a god. He was hinting at the heart of the Trinity – three persons who are one in nature and essence and in perfect unity with one another. There are false religions that deny that God had a Son because they do not understand the nature of His sonship either.

As the Father’s representative on earth, Jesus perfectly mirrored the Father in His nature and perfectly revealed the Father in His work. His religious opponents could not get their head around the compassion Jesus showed to people, especially those whom religion despised and ostracized because they did not measure up to their standards according to the god they had created and worshipped.

Their god put people into categories like “sinners” and “prostitutes” and “lepers” and “tax-collectors”. They did not mix with people like that because they were “holy” in their own eyes, not separate from sin but separated from the ones they despised and categorized as “sinners”.

Instead of being drawn to Jesus because of His mercy, they were repulsed by Him because He showed up their wicked hearts and they were not prepared to change. They loved their status and the power it gave them to manipulate people too much to recognize who He really was.

This was the nature and depth of their sin compared with the “sinners” they so despised. It touched the core of who they really were and triggered a hatred for the God they were supposed to be representing. They targeted Jesus for extermination. This is what the Bible defines as “envy”. Envy is not another word for jealousy. It goes much deeper than that. Envy hates the goodness in another person so much that it is willing to kill to get rid of that goodness.

“For he (Pilate) knew that it was for envy that they handed Jesus over to them,” Matthew 27:18 (NIV).

This envy began to chew at them when the compassion of Jesus showed up their callous indifference to the suffering of others and exposed the false religion they paraded as godliness which alienated them from the very people of which they were supposed to be a part.

We are constantly being called on to take a stand. Are we part of those who put people into categories or are we just members of the human race who need the grace and compassion of Jesus to forgive and make us whole?

The Battle Begins

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THE BATTLE BEGINS

“The man who was healed had no idea who it was, for Jesus had slipped away into the crowd that was there. Later Jesus found him at the temple and said to him, ‘See, you are well again. Stop sinning or something worse may happen to you.’ The man went away and told the Jewish leaders that it was Jesus who had made him well. So, because Jesus was doing these things on the Sabbath, the Jewish leaders began to persecute Him. In His defence Jesus said to them, ‘My Father is always at His work to this very day, and I too, am working.'” John 5:13-17 (NIV).

The battle royal has begun, the oldest and fiercest battle in the world, the war between religion and truth.

Satan’s modus operandi is to ensnare people through deception to believe his lies which take many forms, so that he can control them through fear. Religion is one of his most potent lies — whatever form religion takes — that people are able to reach their god through their own efforts.

The Pharisees’ god was a demanding disciplinarian who could only be appeased through strict obedience to his rules (to which their rabbis had added a whole lot more to be on the safe side) and through the shedding of much animal blood. The Sabbath was a very important part of their rule-keeping ritual and they were incensed when anyone “broke” any of their prohibitions.

When Jesus healed the paralysed man on the Sabbath and instructed him to carry his sleeping mat, they found themselves up against an implacable enemy. Jesus refused to back down and compromise the truth that the Sabbath was a gift from a loving Father to allow them to rest, and not another day for them to try to appease Him by keeping rules.

God’s commandments were never intended to be restrictive, making life burdensome and unpleasant. He was regulating the lives of a group of people who only knew slavery and the abuses they had suffered at the hands of their cruel Egyptian masters. He had to teach them to be human again. He also had to teach them the meaning and consequences of sin and holiness so that they could show the world what their God was like.

God’s “Law” was a marriage covenant, setting the boundaries within which they would flourish in their relationship with their “husband”. He wanted them to live in union with Him so that they could carry out their task of having dominion over the created order under His authority as He intended from the beginning. The Hebrew word “torah” means “teaching”, not “law” as in dictatorial restrictions. God was teaching His people how to live again.

God wanted them to be a family of sons and daughters, living in harmony with Him and with one another, but they had made it into a slave-master religion, ruled by fear, not love. David was one of a very few of God’s people who really understood His intention and got past the rigmarole of rules and ritual to an intimate father-son relationship.

The strict rule-keeping of the Pharisees closed their hearts to the suffering of the fellow beings which angered Jesus as much as His rule-breaking angered them. God was not so callous as to ignore the needs of people and animals when they happened on the Sabbath. If an animal fell into a pit, they could not leave it there until the next day just because it was the Sabbath. They were to rescue it regardless.

Jesus was no less concerned about suffering people. When their need came to His attention, He did what was necessary to get them out of their “pit” but the Pharisees reacted against Him because He made God too “nice”.

Jesus’ response to the Pharisees was to inform them that, although God rested on the Sabbath, He was still working. That sounds a bit contradictory, doesn’t it? God rested from His creative activity but He is fully involved in the work of re-creation. Man messed everything up and God is busy putting things right again. Jesus was also involved by His mission and ministry on earth. The cross would be the defining moment, providing the motivation and the power to reconcile people to God and to set them on the new way to restoration and wholeness.

The Pharisees neither understood not die they want to understand. They preferred their way because they had status and power. They rejected the possibility of a new status, sons of God, and a new power to overcome sin and become imitators of God as dearly loved children. It was their choice.

What’s yours?

How Many Bricks?

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HOW MANY BRICKS 

“The day on which this took place was a Sabbath, and so the Jewish leaders said to the man who had been healed, ‘It is the Sabbath; the law forbids you to carry your mat.’

“But he replied, ‘The man who made me well said to me, ‘Pick up your mat and walk.’ ‘So they asked him, ‘Who is this fellow who told you to pick it up and walk?’ “John 5:9-11 (NIV)

The Sabbath — a hot issue for the Pharisees, but why? Anyone who violated the Sabbath got them going. Was it because it was the one thing they could control? Breaking the Sabbath was an outward violation of the law and they could come down hard on the culprit to show him who was boss.

However, to them Sabbath-breaking wasn’t about “breaking” the fourth commandment as much as it was about contravening their petty laws which were added to the fourth commandment as their interpretation of God’s law. The fourth commandment was about keeping the Sabbath, not breaking it, and it all depended on what was meant by “keeping” the Sabbath!

In order to understand the Sabbath, we have to go back to when and where this commandment originated. It was part of God’s marriage covenant with them at Sinai when they came out of Egypt. Why was it necessary for God to give His people an instruction like this? Was it to put restrictions on them? No, it was to set them free.

The only life the Hebrews knew in Egypt was a life of slavery. Seven days a week they made bricks. Their value for their masters lay in what they could produce. God sent Moses to deliver them from Egypt and everything Egypt stood for. Without an instruction like that, they would have gone on thinking that their only worth to God lay in what they could achieve or produce and not in who they were.

They had to be reprogrammed to realize that their work did not make them who they were. They were of worth to God because He had created them in His image to be a reflection of Himself, not only for His own sake but also to train them to treat one another with dignity and respect.

When God’s work of creation was complete, He rested but He did not sit back, fold His arms and do nothing. He supervised what He had created to ensure that everything functioned together in perfect harmony. He wanted these newly-freed slaves to remember that it was He who set up the Sabbath as a legitimate day of rest and it was the Egyptians who had contradicted His instruction.

For the Jews the Sabbath was intended to be a gift from God to set them free from viewing themselves in terms of what they could produce, and to give them time and opportunity to catch their breath, recover their strength and get ready for another six days of labour. They were to remember that God set it up for them because He had rested on the seventh day after His work was complete. It was a “sign” of His covenant with them set up at Mount Sinai.

“Say to the Israelites, ‘You must observe my Sabbaths. This will be a sign between me and you for the generations to come, so you may know that I am the Lord, who makes you holy.'” Exodus 31:13 (NIV).

The religious leaders had turned the Sabbath into a day of restrictions and religious rules so that they could monitor what the people were doing and jump on them when they stepped out of line. They prescribed what “work” was in such petty detail that the people were hardly able to move.

Jesus refused to be dictated to by these religious slave-drivers. He was not intimidated by their accusations and threats. Carrying a mat was not work; it was part of legitimate daily activity. He insisted that the Sabbath was a gift of God’s love, not prison bars to dehumanize them, and that He was the author of the Sabbath, not some human rule-makers who failed to understand why it was needed in the first place.

The Sabbath was a visual aid of a rest that went much deeper that just one day of not working. It was prophetic of a day which God called “today” in which we would rest form every effort to please God by our own “work”. When we enter into Jesus, we enter into His rest, because He satisfied God’s requirement for a perfect life and then died to pay the debt of our imperfection. He calls us to enter that rest by trusting in His finished work.

Have you entered His rest?

What Is The Right Thing To Do?

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WHAT IS THE RIGHT THING TO DO?

“On another Sabbath He went to the meeting place and taught. There was a man there with a crippled right hand. The religion scholars and Pharisees had their eye on Jesus to see if He would heal the man, hoping to catch Him in a Sabbath infraction. He knew what they were up to and spoke to the man with the crippled hand, ‘Get up and stand here before us,’

“Then Jesus addressed them, ‘Let me ask you something: What kind of action suits the Sabbath best? Doing good or doing evil? Helping people or leaving them helpless?’ He looked around, looked each one in the eye. He said to the man, ‘Hold out your hand.’ He held it out — it was as good as new! They were beside themselves with anger, and started plotting how they might get even with Him.” Luke 6:6-11 (The Message).

Another nail in His coffin! The religious types were becoming more and more enraged with Jesus. What raised their wrath against Him?

Wherever He went, He bumped into need after need after need — people who were enslaved by all kinds of things; demons, deformities, diseases and, worst of all, the burdens that their own so-called spiritual leaders put on them which God never intended for them to carry. These things enraged Jesus as much as His compassion angered them.

Here was another stand-off — on the Sabbath — another set-up in the synagogue and they waited to see what He would do. He had already cut them down to size by defending His disciples against their accusation of “working” on the Sabbath by rubbing grain in their hands. Now it was His turn. Jesus would never turn away from need, and they knew it.

Jesus didn’t need to read their minds. He only needed to look at their faces and read their body language to know what they were thinking. I think He was having fun. ‘What should I do?’ He shot at them, ‘Leave the man in his suffering just because it is a day called “Sabbath” or heal him because the Sabbath is as good a day as any to be kind?’

The hyper-religious ones didn’t even answer. They couldn’t without exposing their wicked hearts. Then, to crown it all, Jesus did nothing! He spoke! Was it wrong to speak on the Sabbath? They hadn’t tied that one up with a rule yet! Jesus didn’t even use the word “heal” or any equivalent. What’s wrong with, ‘Get up and stand here before us,’ and ‘Hold out your hand’?

The scribes and Pharisees were floored. Without doing a thing, Jesus healed the man just like that! They had no answer for that one but they were angry anyway; angry because He had got the better of them again, making them look like fools in the eyes of the people; angry because He had shown up their selfish indifference to the suffering of others; angry because He had ignored their rules and they were always right, so they thought; probably angry most of all because they could not understand how He did what He did and they were not willing to admit that God was working through Him.

The Pharisees aside, what was Jesus teaching by His actions, to us as well as to those who were with Him? Sabbath is much less about going to church as it is about reaching out to people in need. Sabbath is about resting from our own work to do the work of God. Sabbath is not about a day. It’s about a lifestyle, resting in the work of Jesus that frees us from slavery to our own selfish ways so that we look beyond ourselves to lift the burden off other people’s shoulders.

Jesus was insisting that righteousness is not about not doing wrong but doing right; not abstaining but taking action for those who had no power to act for themselves. He defined wickedness, not as doing wrong, but as not doing right. The rich men in His stories were charged with greed and indifference, one for hoarding his bounty instead of sharing, and the other for ignoring the poor man at his gate.

What about you? Are you a stickler for laws, or are your eyes and ears open to the poor?

 

 

Not Rules But Rest

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NOT RULES BUT REST

“On a certain Sabbath Jesus was walking through a field of ripe grain. His disciples were pulling off heads of grain, rubbing them in their hands to get rid of the chaff, and eating them. Some Pharisees said, ‘Why are you doing that, breaking a Sabbath rule?’

“But Jesus stood up for them.’Have you never read what David and those with him did when they were hungry? How he entered the sanctuary and ate fresh bread off the altar, bread that no one but priests were allowed to eat? He also handed it out to his companions.’

“Then He said, ‘The Son of Man is no slave to the Sabbath; He’s in charge.'” Luke 6:1-5 (The Message).

Always a contentious issue — the Sabbath! This time it was the disciples who were in trouble with the Pharisees, not Jesus.

The Sabbath was God’s gracious gift to His people and a reminder that He also rested after completing His work of creation.

When He had rescued them from slavery in Egypt, He reminded them of the Sabbath and built it into their marriage contract at Sinai, firstly as sign of His covenant with them, and secondly to provide the weekly cycle of six days of work to one day of rest to remind them that they were not machines but humans, and that rest was as necessary for them as their work.

So overzealous had their rabbis become over the years that they had turned the people into slaves of the Sabbath, hedging it up with so many petty rules that they had forgotten its real purpose. Instead of a day of rest, it had become a day of “don’t do this; you are not allowed to do that,” until they could hardly move for rules. And the Pharisees were the self-appointed “policemen “of their yoke!

Jesus was never a slave to their prescriptions or their opinions. His yoke was one of kindness and mercy as a mirror of the disposition of His Father. He had not come to reinforce their petty religious nonsensical traditions which had no value in either honouring the Father or helping the people to love and care for one another. He had come to show them what God is like and to teach them how God runs His realm.

They said, ‘It’s better to starve than break our rules, and our rules say that picking grain and rubbing it in your hands is reaping, and reaping is work.’ Jesus said, ‘My disciples are hungry and God is more concerned about that than about rules.’ To illustrate, He drew their attention to what their own great king, David, did when he was hungry. He did what was even more glaringly wrong in their estimation. He actually broke a law of God, not even one of theirs, and nothing happened to him.

So then, what is the Sabbath and how does it apply to us now? Sabbath has significance in two ways — a creation ordinance of God to provide us with a regular day of rest once a week, and a prophetic picture of the rest from our religious “labour” that God has provided. Jesus invites us into a permanent rest from trying to gain access to God by our own futile efforts.

No amount of trying or “doing” will ever be enough, but Jesus did it for us by getting rid of our sin and giving us access to the Father as His sons and daughters. Sabbath is no longer a rigid, religious, one-day-a-week rest, but a permanent and perpetual rest of faith in Christ that sets us free from observing laws in order to gain God’s favour.

We are now God’s sons and daughters, no longer lost and in a far country. We have come home to Father’s house and can lively freely with Him as His children, not as slaves.

Have you come home to His rest?