Whole message on Sabbath Luke 13

Sabbath –Healing and our Lives   Luke 13:10-17

 

On Sunday heaven's gates stand open. - George Herbert

John Calvin; “If the Lord’s day is abolished, the church would be in imminent danger of convulsion and ruin.”

GENERAL ORDER RESPECTING THE OBSERVANCE OF THE SABBATH DAY IN THE ARMY AND NAVY

EXECUTIVE MANSION,
Washington, November 15, 1862

The President, Commander-in-Chief of the Army and Navy, desires and enjoins the orderly observance of the Sabbath by the officers and men in the military and naval service. The importance for men and beast of the prescribed weekly rest, the sacred rights of Christian soldiers and sailors, a becoming deference to the best sentiment of a Christian people, and a due regard for the divine will demand that Sunday labor in the Army and Navy be reduced to the measure of strict necessity.
The discipline and character of the national forces should not suffer nor the cause they defend be imperiled by the profanation of the day or name of the Most High. “At this time of public distress,” adopting the words of Washington in 1776, “men may find enough to do in the service of God and their country without abandoning themselves to vice and immorality.” The first general order issued by the Father of his Country after the Declaration of Independence indicates the spirit in which our institutions were founded and should ever be defended:

The General hopes and trusts that every officer and man will endeavor to live and act as becomes a Christian soldier defending the dearest rights and liberties of his country.

ABRAHAM LINCOLN

 

 

D. L. Moody (1837-1899) made the following appeal in regard to the Sabbath:

"I honestly believe that this commandment is just as binding today as it ever was. I have talked with men who have said that it has been abrogated, but they have never been able to point to any place in the Bible where God repealed it. When Christ was on earth, He did nothing to set it aside; He freed it from the traces under which the scribes and Pharisees had put it, and gave it its true place. 'The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath.' It is just as practicable and as necessary for men today as it ever was-in fact, more than ever, because we live in such an intense age.
The Sabbath was binding in Eden, and it has been in force ever since. The fourth commandment begins with the word remember, showing that the Sabbath already existed when God wrote this law on the tables of stone at Sinai. How can men claim that this one commandment has been done away with when they will admit that the other nine are still binding?
I believe that the Sabbath question today is a vital one for the whole country. It is the burning question of the present time. If you give up the Sabbath the church goes; if you give up the church the home goes; and if the home goes the nation goes. That is the direction in which we are traveling.
The church of God is losing its power on account of so many people giving up the Sabbath, and using it to promote selfishness."

 

I start with a couple of good thoughts on the Lord’s Day---in the context of the miracle of Jesus’ healing on the Sabbath .  So what about Sunday?  Has it vanished in the culture we live in?  I would say so.  Even in churches Sunday is taken for granted by many and profaned and insulted by others.

 

Isaiah reminds us:” If you refrain from trampling the sabbath,

from pursuing your own interests on my holy day;

if you call the sabbath a delight

and the holy day of the LORD honorable;

if you honor it, not going your own ways,

serving your own interests, or pursuing your own affairs;

then you shall take delight in the LORD,

and I will make you ride upon the heights of the earth; “

Jesus heals on the Sabbath.  And in fact He re-established the Sabbath as a principle in its creation and right context and not the narrow interest of the religious leaders . 

I like to think of the Lord’s Day as recreation.  That is what it is.  We should not be narrow as the “ruler of the synagogue “ was.    The woman had sickness for 18 years, not being able to stand up straight wholly.  Jesus heals her.  But apparently the leaders were not happy about it.  They took care of their animals Jesus pointed out .  But the woman not so. Jesus calls them “hypocrites”

So how should we observe Sabbath?

Marva Dawn in her book , The Sense of the Call says: “ The Sabbath is a holy cathedral in time. We don’t crank out its holiness by our efforts; we simply enter into the holiness already created by the LORD….The leading cause of death in the United States is stress. Let’s recognize that if we ignore the rhythm of life God set into our blood and bones we do so to our peril.  We are the ones who kill ourselves with tension, anxiety, overwork, ceaseless efforts insufficient rest, our constant need to accomplish.  The tragedy in our society is that so few people keep a full Sabbath no one notices they have been cut off.  Their lives are jammed with solo endeavors…The Sabbath is not a burden, even though so many turn it into one by flooding it with obligations. …Rather …it’s a day of celebration…”

The Gospel for today ends with “ And on these things on his saying were ashamed all who were opposed to Him; and all the crowd were rejoicing at all the glorious things which were being done by Him.”  Luke 13:17

They had missed the purpose and beauty of the Sabbath.  I know we can be restrictive sometimes yet there is a purpose to the Lord’s Day to keep it holy .  We ought to fence the Lord’s Day to rest and do works of mercy and to worship.  We know that is its primary place.  There are times as Jesus points out that good things must also be done.  Obviously we can pursue our own interests and affairs and not delight in the LORD . That is all too easy to do in this place and time in which we live.  But if we are truly His people and wish to find ways to mostly work around these things that will interrupt our service in worship and caring we know we can find them. 

We may want to say, “ I just give up.”  The family or whoever is pressuring me too much and I must do what they want.  Then we are not following God and putting Him first in all our doings.  As Christians we want to glorify God in all our activities and not just on Sunday.

“Dwight, Timothy, D.D. This is the most important name in early American hymnology, as it is also one of the most illustrious in American literature and education. He was born at Northampton, Massachusetts, May 14, 1752, and graduated at Yale College, 1769; was a tutor there from 1771 to 1777. He then became for a short time a chaplain in the United States Army, but passed on in 1783 to Fairfield, Connecticut, where he held a pastorate, and taught in an Academy, till his appointment, in 1795, as President of Yale College. His works are well known, and need no enumeration. He died at New Haven, Jan. 11, 1817. In 1797 the General Association of Connecticut, being dissatisfied with Joel Barlow's 1785 revision of Watts, requested Dwight to do the work de novo. This he did liberally, furnishing in some instances several paraphrases of the same psalm, and adding a selection of hymns, mainly from Watts.

 

1. “  I love Thy kingdom, Lord,
   The place of Thine abode,
   The church our blest Redeemer saved
   With His own precious blood.
2. I love Thy church, O God;
   Her walls before Thee stand,
   Dear as the apple of Thine eye,
   And graven on Thy hand.
3. For her my tears shall fall;
   For her my prayers ascend;
   To her my cares and toils be giv’n,
   Till toils and cares shall end.
4. Beyond my highest joy
   I prize her heav’nly ways,
   Her sweet communion, solemn vows,
   Her hymns of love and praise.
5. Sure as Thy truth shall last,
   To Zion shall be giv’n
   The brightest glories earth can yield,
   And brighter bliss of Heav’n.”