Sunday, August 23, 2015

The message prepared for today at NRN!



Part 4 Remember the Sabbath day and keep it holy!
                   
                                                                                                                  Exodus 20:8-11

 Remember the Sabbath day and keep it holy. Six days you shall labor and do all your work, 10 but the seventh day is a Sabbath to the Lord your God. On it you shall not do any work, you, or your son, or your daughter, or your male servant, or your female servant, or your livestock, or your sojourner who is within your gates. 11 For in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them, and rested on the seventh day. Therefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy.                                                                                    Exodus 20:8-11 MEV
Blue laws —known also as Sunday laws—are laws designed to restrict or ban some or all Sunday activities for religious standards, particularly the observance of a day of worship or rest. Blue laws may also restrict shopping or ban sale of certain items on specific days, most often on Sundays in the western world.
Jesus went through the grain fields on the Sabbath. As they went, His disciples began to pluck the heads of grain. The Pharisees said to Him, “Look, why are they doing on the Sabbath what is not lawful?” He said to them, “Have you never read what David did, when he and those who were with him were in need and hungry: how he went into the house of God, in the days Abiathar was the high priest, and ate the ritual bread, which is lawful only for the priests to eat, and also gave it to those who were with him?” Then He said to them, “The Sabbath was made for man, and not man for the Sabbath. So the Son of Man is Lord even of the Sabbath.”                                                                            Mark 2:23-28 MEV       
1. The Sabbath was not meant to restrict NECESSITIES (vs. 25-26)
 And he said to them, “Have you never read what David did, when he was in need and was hungry, he and those who were with him: how he entered the house of God, in the time of  Abiathar the high priest, and ate the bread of the Presence, which it is not lawful for any but the priests to eat, and also gave it to those who were with him?”                Mark 2:25-26
Example: David in fleeing from Saul (I Samuel 21:1-6) took five loaves of the showbread that was to be eaten only by the priests and gave them to his men. The man of God, David was justified in breaking the ceremonial law because his need for sustenance was greater than keeping the ceremonial law. (He broke the ceremonial law not to indulge a lust but to meet a genuine need) Meeting true human need and compassion takes precedence over custom, ritual, ceremony and tradition.
Hosea 6:6    "For I desired mercy, and not sacrifice; and the knowledge of God more than burnt offerings."
"For I desired mercy, and not sacrifice; and the knowledge of God more than burnt offerings."                                                                                     Hosea 6:6 MEV  
2. The Sabbath was made to SERVE   MAN not MAN SERVE the day.

And he said to them, “The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath. Mark 2:27

Sabbath - Shabbat is the original Hebrew word for our English word sabbath. It means “to cease, to end, to rest.”

How should we observe the Sabbath?  How does it apply to us, not apply to us? Lots of questions emerge from the fourth commandment, so let’s read it together. Let’s unpack it in order. So, let’s walk through it together:

 Exodus 20:8–11: “Remember”—and the “remember” here is to take something that is from the past so that it would be living in the present and live on in the future. It’s not just a mental remembrance; it’s celebrating and modeling that which has gone before us so that it would have a future.

 So, “Remember the Sabbath day.” Sabbath means cessation of work or rest. “Your day off” would be our sort of common vernacular for that.

“To keep it holy.” Holiness is a hugely important concept. The number one most frequently mentioned attribute of God in the whole Bible is that he is holy. This means he is other, he’s different from us. So, we’re sinful, he’s not, all right? We’re created, he’s eternal. We have to learn things, he knows everything. He’s different from we are, so this concept of holiness is that six days, we work. We do the same thing, we get up and go to work. On the seventh day—it’s holy, it’s set apart, it’s different. It’s different from the other six days.

So, one of the ways you know you’re violating the Sabbath is if, over and over and over, seven days keep looking alike. If that’s the case, you’re violating the Sabbath. If six days look alike and one day looks different, you might be actually obeying the principle of the Sabbath.

“Six days you shall labor, and do all your work.” Let me unpack this. A lot of people say, “Oh, this is the commandment about the Sabbath.” It is about the Sabbath, but it’s also about work, and this keeps us from twin idols. You remember the first commandment is there’s one God. The second commandment is, we only worship God—we don’t worship idols. We established that an idol is a created thing. And some of us worship our work. We worship our job. And we’ll make fun of the pagans who used to have sacrifices where they’d get an altar, and they’d lay down a person or an animal, and slaughter it to the gods.

Well, sometimes our god is called “job” and sometimes our sacrifice is called “health,” “marriage,” “children,” “family,” “church” or our “day off.” Sometimes we can have job be god and we offer various sacrifices to appease our god. So, this principle in the fourth commandment keeps us from worshiping our job or worshiping our comfort.

In (Deuteronomy 5:12-15) the Lord reminds His people that they had been slaves in Egypt and that He had brought them out from there. In commanding them to observe the Sabbath, the weekly rest would remind them of a time when as slaves they were unable to rest. 

This refers to the association between Israel's slavery in Egypt and the Sabbath. Thus the name for our series: The Ten Commandments: Set Free to Live Free…  

Two of the greatest needs of man are for rest and worship - neither, of which Israel was free to do in Egypt.


Quote: Our hearts are restless until they find rest in You.                                                                            St. Augustine

God's original intent was for the Sabbath to be a blessing not a burden. The Sabbath was to benefit man to help him gain rest and to have a revived sense of God's presence.

"Rest in the LORD, and wait patiently for him..."  Psalms 37:7
3. The Sabbath is NOT the Lord's Day.

No where in the New Testament is the Christian commanded to observe the Sabbath. The Sabbath was essentially Jewish, which explains, its absence in New Testament instructions to Christians. The Sabbath was the sixth day - began at sunset Friday and ran through sunset Saturday. The Lord's Day is the first day of the week corresponding to our Sunday.
You and I can easily overlook that unless you’ve got some Jewish friends or you’ve been to a place that is, in large part, Jewish people.

And if you have any Jewish friends that still really keep the Sabbath in a devout and strict way. They’re not going to use any electricity, they’re going to use candles or leave the lights on from the night before. They’re not going to eat any food that they cooked that day, because they had to prep it the day before to make sure they weren’t doing any work. They’re not going to travel a long distance. Even some who are very devout will not open their refrigerator to get a snack unless they’ve taken the light bulb out, because if you open the door and the light bulb turns on, that could be a violation of the Sabbath.

We Gentiles don’t get this. Most of us are not really committed too much of anything with that degree of devotion. It really hit me when I was in Israel some years ago. When the Sabbath hit, which is Friday night to Saturday night, sundown to sundown, everything was shut down. You couldn’t get a cab, businesses were closed, you couldn’t transact business, nothing could get done because everything literally stopped, and everything changed.

Example: THE JESUS ELEVATOR

The early church set aside the Lord's Day as a day of rest, worship, and celebration of Christ's resurrection.

On the first day of the week, when the disciples came together, to break bread, Paul, ready to leave the next day, preached to them   and continued his message until midnight.                                                                             Acts 20:7 MEV 
On the first day of the week let every one of you lay in store, as God has prospered him, so that no collections be made when I come.         1 Corinthians 16:2 MEV
I was in the Spirit on the Lord’s Day, and I heard behind me a great voice like a trumpet…                                                                         Revelation 1:10 MEV              
  4. Christ is the LORD of the Sabbath and EVERY day!
Jesus is the great Creator of the universe. All things were made by Him and without Him was not anything made that was made. He created the heaven and earth and all things in six days. He sanctified the seventh day and made it the day of rest. He is the Lord of the Sabbath. In affirming His Deity, Christ declares He is Lord and is greater than the Sabbath. He therefore has the right to overrule man-made rules and tradition.
Therefore let no one judge you regarding food, or drink, or in respect of a holy day or new moon or Sabbath days. These are shadows of things to come, but the substance belongs to Christ.                                      Colossians 2:16-17 MEV
5. The rhythm of setting aside a time each week to REST   and WORSHIP is biblically sound.

The important thing is that we set aside time for rest and worship. These are two things we desperately need. As human beings, our Creator did not design us to work seven days a week. Our bodies and souls both need rest, and taking off one day out every seven is good for us. Those of us with workaholic tendencies may find it difficult to get into the habit of a regularly scheduled day off, but we need it. It should always be something to which we look forward.

Every day as believers we should take time to read the Bible, pray, and express our praise to God. But, it is important to have at least one day in seven, which we set aside so that we can have an extended time to worship and focus upon the Lord both corporately and individually
Let us not forsake the assembling of ourselves together, as is the manner of some, but let us exhort one another, especially as you see the Day approaching.                                                                                                Hebrews 3:20 MEV
Quote: Warren Wiersbe - The ability to calm your soul and wait before God is one of the most difficult things in the Christian life. Our old nature is restless...the world around us is frantically in a hurry. But a restless heart usually leads to a reckless life.
Conclusion: Christ as Lord of the Sabbath offers true rest to whoever comes to Him.
 “Come to Me, all you who labor and are heavily burdened, and I will give you rest. Take My yoke upon you, and learn from Me. For I am meek and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For My yoke is easy, and My burden is light.”                                                                                        Matthew 11:28-30

As the Sabbath gave Israel the opportunity to celebrate the freedom and rest from slavery in Egypt; so the Lord's day provides an opportunity to celebrate the freedom and rest from the slavery of sin that comes through a personal relationship with Jesus Christ.    
   PRAY

No comments:

Post a Comment