My grandmother was a Baptist who raised her children to, “Remember the Sabbath to keep it holy.” (Exodus 20:8Exodus 20:8
English: Contemporary English Version (1999) - CEV
8 Remember that the Sabbath Day belongs to me.
WP-Bible plugin) My mother, in turn, raised her children the same way. We, therefore, went to Sunday school and to church and to youth group on Sunday and did very little else. We were taught that we should keep the Lord’s day for Him, and anything which could be done on another day should be left undone on Sunday. I know that my mother was doing her best to bring us up in a way that was pleasing to the Lord, but I will let you know that the curtailing of everything I considered ‘fun’ on Sunday was not pleasing to me at the time. It caused me to become resentful and inwardly rebellious, and yes, hard-hearted, in my youth.
The Pharisees were religious men, those who knew what the Law read and they were men who practiced traditions. They were proud, haughty and hard-hearted. They wanted to look good in the eyes of those they lived and worshiped with. They did not recognize Jesus as the promised Messiah, and they weren’t pleased when he corrected them, making them look foolish. When Jesus healed a woman on the Sabbath Day, when he healed a man in the temple on the Sabbath, when he gave his approval of the disciples, who on the Sabbath, picked grains of wheat and rubbed them in their hands in order to make the grain edible, the Pharisees were disgruntled. They spoke among themselves about Jesus and his unorthodox ways which appeared to be disobedience to the Law. They would have been happy to have him out of their lives.
Was Jesus being disobedient to Moses’ Law? Of course not! He was God! He was the Giver of the Law. He was a sinless man who would become the Sacrificial Lamb for all sinners. How then could He give, believe and live the Law, and still appear to be breaking the Jewish Law concerning the Sabbath? After all, did not the scriptures say, “Remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy. Six days shall you labor, and do all your work, but the seventh day is a sabbath of the Lord your God. In it you shall not do any work.” Exodus 20: 8-10Exodus 20: 8-10
English: Contemporary English Version (1999) - CEV
8 Remember that the Sabbath Day belongs to me.
9 ; . You have six days when you can do your work,
10 but the seventh day of each week belongs to me, your God. No one is to work on that day—not you, your children, your slaves, your animals, or the foreigners who live in your towns.
WP-Bible plugina. The Hebrew word, shabbath means ‘to rest from your labor’. It appears that God’s word was clearly telling the hearer that a rest was necessary. God, the Creator, even exemplified that when ‘on the seventh day He rested.’
Were the Pharisees really concerned that Jesus was breaking God’s Law? Or were they more concerned with finding a way to trick Him and then to punish Him? I believe it was the latter. Was Jesus doing wrong on the Sabbath by releasing a woman, bound in slavery to sickness , or should he have turned a hard heart from her? Was He breaking the Law or was He doing God’s business? As I sought answers about these things, I read a modern day example which said something about being in an assembly of worship, and seeing someone in the group overtaken with a heart attack. Would it be better for a person with medical training to stop his worship to help, or should he continue worshiping, because it was the Sabbath? I think we would agree that it would be better to attend to the immediate need than to ignore it. Jesus must have felt the same way when He healed the man with the lame hand and the woman bound by illness. His mercy and compassion motivated Him to act in service to the Father, rather than to ignore them and bow in worship.
We are meant to gather together for worship and prayer. We commonly consider that time to be ‘the Sabbath’ and most have set aside Sunday for that worship. But the scriptures do, indeed, teach us to set aside a special time, individually, where we stop our business, rest from our every day concerns, to hear God as He says, “Be still and know that I am God.” (Psalm 45:10Psalm 45:10
English: Contemporary English Version (1999) - CEV
10 Bride of the king,
listen carefully to me.
Forget your own people
and your father's family.
WP-Bible plugin) It also tells us that “the Sabbath was made for man, not the man for the Sabbath.’ (Mark 2:27-28Mark 2:27-28
English: Contemporary English Version (1999) - CEV
27 Jesus finished by saying, “People were not made for the good of the Sabbath. The Sabbath was made for the good of people.
28 So the Son of Man is Lord over the Sabbath.”
WP-Bible plugin) The Sabbath was given to us as a time of refreshment. Any day can be ‘the Sabbath’…in the true sense of the word….a period of rest from our work, a time of renewal, a time of reflection, a time when we find a quiet place in our hearts to speak to the Lord and to listen to Him. Let us “remember the Sabbath to keep it holy.”
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