Luke 6:1-11 with Jerad Beckler

Transcript

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All right, well, good good morning. And uh I'm gonna I'm gonna agree with what what Aaron said. Just worship really blessed me today. And I thought about asking Zach, like, could we just sing that last song for 45 minutes and I don't even have to preach? So it's just so good. Um, so good. Um, and not to to preach the sermon before I preach this sermon, but I just sense God's um yeah, putting on my heart just his love for you, and thinking out of uh Zeph and I where he says that he sings over you, that that's our father, that he loves us that much that as we're singing to him, he's he's singing back to us. And that's just amazing. It's just an amazing thought. So um, yeah, I'm excited for this morning. Again, not to preach this before I preach the sermon, but just um as I was thinking through coming here this morning, one of the greatest blessings of getting to preach other, you know, getting to dig into God's word and um him refining me is really just from this perspective, like looking out and seeing your faces. Um, and just yeah, it's just so good to dwell together in unity and just to see you every every Sunday. And so I'm just feeling a lot of a lot of fondness for you and grateful for you to be here. And um, yeah, and so thank you for being here and for this being a place where we we worship God together. So we're gonna be in Luke 6 this morning. Luke 6. It's off, but there was a slide up here that showed that if you don't have one of our journals, our handy-dandy journals, that we have lots of in our house, we collect journals. Uh, one of the the Luke journals, we have those for you. Um, we do um always want us to be in God's word, um, to be to be taking it in, highlighting, writing little things down. That's one of my favorite things to see our kids doing. Uh, it's a cool example for us. So uh we're gonna open in prayer and then we'll get into Luke, Luke 6. So, Jesus, we just Jesus, we praise you. We praise you for this morning. Um, even as it it uh rains real hard outside, God, and and uh the seasons are changing. We thank you that you don't change, that you stay the same. And um we rest in that as we even talk about that today, knowing that you are our firm foundation, our hope. Um so God is be with us during this time. We ask, oh Lord, that um it would be your words, it would be um you, Holy Spirit, that moves us, um, that refines us, that encourages us, that um brings glory to you all for your good, Lord. We we love you, we thank you for this time. Praise in Jesus' name. Amen. All right, so we are in Luke six. Uh this is following up what Aaron preached on last week out of Luke 5 on fasting. So we're kind of continuing in some of the theme of the Christian life. Um, I was not here last week, but I listened to it. It was really good if you weren't here. I do encourage you to go back and listen to it. Lindsay now we're downstairs with the kids. And so we're continuing on into this topic of Sabbath. So here we go, Luke 6, we're gonna go 1 through 11. 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, Why 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 are 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 him, to them, The Son of Man is Lord of the Sabbath. 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 he 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 was, Stretch all 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. So one of my favorite movies is Chariots of Fire. Anyone seen Chariots of Fire? There we go, let's go. So you may be more familiar with the opening soundtrack, the to that movie, but it is the true story of Eric Little and Harold Abrams leading up to the 1920 Paris Olympics. So Little was a devoted Scottish Christian whose faith shaped every part of his life and his athletic career. And when he learns that his best event, the event that he's supposed to win, is scheduled on a Sunday, the Sabbath day, he refuses to compete because of his commitment to honor the Sabbath, causing a national stir that's really the hinge point of the movie. Should honor and country supersede a Sunday Sabbath, especially when it's just one day? Should a man's life, whole life of physical training and God-given ability be bound by his own conscience? So the Sabbath maybe doesn't cause quite that kind of controversy for us today as it did for a little, but there is a constant tug all around us, each and every day, to work more, to live fast, to stay connected, to answer that text, to watch that video, to go to that one more thing, and quite honestly, just to distort our lives to 168 hours that we put on repeat again and again, with if we're lucky, a few weeks of vacation every year. And the reality is that the Sabbath today in 2026 in the West is more foreign than it's ever been. So, what is this rest day, the Sabbath day really supposed to look like? And that's a question I really pondered over the last month. How did God design it? You know, how are we supposed to act inside of it? And greatest of all in my mind, why does Jesus call himself Lord of the Sabbath? So, to answer some of these questions and a few more, we're gonna go back literally to the beginning, to when the Sabbath was established in Genesis, to when God created the world. And then it carries on through his covenanting with them, with Moses and his people, redemption through the prophets that's that's prophesied and then being fulfilled in the glory of Jesus. So we're gonna build to these two moments that I just read where Jesus is surrounded by these Jewish leaders who are well aware of the things we're gonna talk about this morning, but we're fully missing the mark of God's true purpose in the Sabbath and why Jesus calling himself Lord of the Sabbath was blasphemy when he said this, but to us, it's our greatest confidence. So, five specific questions that we're gonna answer today. One, what is the history of the Sabbath? Two, how does Jesus fulfill the Sabbath's design and purpose? Three, why is the Sabbath such good news? Four, how can we Sabbath in Jesus? And then finally, what is the Sabbath pointing to? Alright, so first one up, what is the history of the Sabbath? So as I said, we're gonna go back to Genesis. So Genesis 2, 1 through 3, I'm gonna read. So thus the heavens and the earth were finished, and all the hosts of them. And on the seventh day, God finished his work that he had done, and he rested on the seventh day from all his work that he had done. So God blessed the seventh day and made it holy. Because on it God rested from all his work that he had done in creation. So right away we see that God models a flow of life where we work for six days and rest for one. So resting is from the Hebrew root word Shabbat, which is where we get Sabbath. It's a day that is uniquely blessed, different, wholly, set apart from the other six days. It's blessed similarly to creation itself, meaning there's a fruitfulness, there's a multiplicity that is attached to it. God gives life to this seventh day. It's a day that's full and flourishing. More, it's the ceasing from work. It's not the end point, but the driver that allows us for the ultimate goal, which is to worship God. God in his goodness creates a weekly boundary, a pause. It's enough. It recognizes that too much of a good thing like work can turn into a bad thing. We can take a good thing and make it the thing, a sinful idol of worship, whether subconsciously or consciously, making it the purpose of our lives. You know, one of the clearest examples of this, as I was thinking through this, happens countless times, millions of times, probably every day around the world, is when two people meet for the first time, they introduce themselves and they say, you know, ask names, and then oftentimes, seven, eight, nine times out of ten, the next question is what do you do? What, thank you, what do you do? What do you do? Your name is followed by the definition of yourself, which with your job. Now I realize there's probably a lot of parents here, maybe who maybe it's not your job, but you define yourself maybe by being a parent, which in reality oftentimes can take more than our nine to five and is even a more dangerous thing to do. Students, you're not off the hook here as well, and you can do this through homework or work or sports. We can be defined by something that goes back to work. And I'm not saying here that this is a bad question to ask, it's a great question in many ways. I'm also not saying that it's wrong to work hard or to love our kids or to be our best, but it does say something about our culture that we so easily and so often use work to define ourselves. I was thinking even this morning that oftentimes you ask how someone is doing, the response is, I'm busy. I'm busy. Friends, this is a problem. It's this very fact that God in his mercy and love and command placed a weekly boundary towards uh for us. He said to rest not for the sole purpose of a being from work, but turning towards Him. When we think of rest, it's not just about the physical, although that's part of it. Rest does happen with a set of parameters, you know, comfort, calm, being undisturbed, but there's also the emotional and the spiritual, you know, and I think at our core we know this. You know, I can have the most delicious cup of coffee sitting on my favorite part of the couch with my terrier on one side and Lindsay on the other, and the TV's not Lindsay's there, the T the TV's on, and promise I'm watching Sunday afternoon golf. I can hear the kids playing outside with the neighbor kids, and it feels great, but my mind's racing. It's racing around building the schedule at work that I don't know really how to do, right? True story. So it's just this difficulty that it's really easy to fall into, if I'm being honest with you. So here's where recognition of what verse says has its foundation. It's a day blessed and made holy by God. Rest is a good thing. Yes, rest does happen in quick moments. We can plan these out, go on vacation, have a long weekend, but God models a rest that's repetitively blessed and holy. Blessed marks it as consecrated, divinely belonging to God, given as a gift. Holy sets it apart and makes it sacred. Just as God blessed the life he created, he blesses a specific day. And combined with rest, it's God calling for our whole being to be aware of on the Sabbath day in Him. And while every day is from God, one in particular is His gift to us that centers us on Him, to lay down the stuff that, if we're honest, it's always going to be there. The work that God had done was good, just as He says, but there's an end point. Six days there is work, and there's none on the seventh. So what's clear but often missed is that this is a call for all of humanity, which I think is pretty, pretty interesting. The design has always been to rest from work. It's written at the very foundation of the world, at the initial moment where God is setting in motion the very way in which humanity is to live. It's God's call and care for us to be aware of boundaries and to be aware of Him. As we are image bearers of God, we image Him, we reflect Him, we worship Him in our work, but also in our rest. Jesus says the Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath. It's a blessing to us, to every human being, that we have one day out of seven that is uniquely uniquely and sacredly different. So God is not describing how life should look. He's actually prescribing it, which is different, right? So it's like going to the doctor and he's like, think about maybe trying this medication out. Maybe it would. No, it's prescribed. This is something that's good for you. So this is covenantal, meaning it's an agreement between God and Adam. Work six days, put it down to worship and commune with him. So before there was sin when Adam and Eve were in the garden, when paradise had been created by God, it was designed that fullness came in working, but then fully pausing to enjoy it. God makes it clear that we fully realize our existence in worship and fellowship of our Creator. Work and busyness then will never fulfill. It'll never fulfill. It's never an endpoint. It always has, always will be an outlet for our worship and meaning in God. And this is God's purpose in giving Sabbath. So if you know the story, if you don't know the story, Adam sins and in doing so breaks this initial covenant. The design of Sabbath rested included Adam walking in the garden with God, which is just an amazing thing to think about, deeply knowing his presence and being in communion with him. And so in Genesis 3, God points to one to come who will restore what's been broken, the one who will crush sin and death and renew our relationship with him. And so we fast forward to the time of the Israelites wandering in the desert, and God has just freed them from 400 years of slavery and toil for Egypt, where they didn't have a Sabbath rest, literally working seven days a week. And God reinstitutes this day for his people as a reminder of their rescue and redemption. And so it says in Exodus 20, 8 through 11. Remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy. Six days you shall labor and do all your work. But the seventh day is a Sabbath day to the Lord your God, and on it you shall not do any work, you or your son or your daughter, your male servant, or your female servant, your livestock, or the journer who is within your gates. For in six days the Lord made the heavens and the 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. You know it's cool to send preparing today and going through this idea of Sabbath and looking at the commandments, is how different and unique this commandment is from the other ones, both in the length and what's there, but also how it starts, where it starts with this word, remember, it's unique to the other nine. None of them start with it. And it's God's way of seeing that this law has already been established as part of his initial design, while also pointing to the way in which it's a day that's to be entered into a certain way. It's to be reflective, introspective, relational. It's in the positive. Before God tells them not to work, he says, remember that just as they are a people set apart, so is this day. So, yes, God tells his people to stop toiling, to stop literally walking through the desert and picking up manna. But he get begins with the why. It's a day for recalling God's goodness. You know, we know that the daily grind of life is really, really loud. And so God says, Still yourselves for 24 hours and just be with me. If every day was solely work and movement, they would be apt to forget what God had done for them, as would we. And the greatness of his rescue and of his providence protection over them would be forgotten. So God calls them to weekly celebrate his rescue from the Egyptians, to remember his power, his mercy, his love, and his care over them, from pulling them literally out of slavery where their work had continually broken them and controlled them. It was used to hold them in bondage. So here God is covenanting with them, promising them good. Again, this is not just for Israel, this is for everyone. This links back, verse 11 links back to the original design of Genesis of this being a universal, God-ordained, image-bearer design for all people to rest and enjoy and to turn your eyes to God. So we can't spend too long here. I had to like cut out this next section quite a bit, but it is really neat how within God's law for the people are these days and festivals that coincide with rest. They're both a simple but literal design that blessed his people and restored what he gave. And so when Israel entered into the promised land, God established that every seven years was a year for the land to literally rest. It was like a macro version of the weekly rest. And so in that year, they weren't to till or turn over or to prune or cut anything that was in the land. And God promised and he did provide in that seventh year. He blessed them. He said, Let the land alone. And this allowed the land to rest and to be restored, showing that in the very design of our world is the need and requirement to rest. It's literally built into the system, it's built into your system to build in literal days to mend the frame that happens in our bodies and minds if we run ourselves ragged. So these micro and macro reminders for the Israelites commanded them to stop from their work and labor and trust and rely on God. It was a reminder of the heavenly command to worshipfully rest and know that God would supply. They trusted false gods and they disobeyed God's command to obey him, including in the Sabbath. But God time and again tells them if they would confess their sin, if He would, if they would trust in Him, He would remember His covenant. So for the next thousand plus years, through exile from their homeland, God uses the prophets to point back to what He promises in Genesis: a full restoration, a full rest. A Messiah is promised that would bring a healing not for land and king, but for our weary souls. And for one that is for all people, echoing the truth of Genesis 2 of God's call to know him as both Creator and Father. Isaiah 66, 22 through 23 says, For as the new heavens and the new earth that I shall make remain before me, says the Lord, so shall your offspring in your name remain. From new moon to new moon, and from Sabbath to Sabbath, all flesh shall come to worship before me, declares the Lord. God's story from the very beginning and always will be, is for him to be known by us, to worship him, to come before him, to reestablish what was broken in the garden. And this time it will remain, it won't be broken, and neither will the Sabbath rest. Just as God's design for us was to reflect and to wonder at this initial creation, to worship him as creator, it points to what's to come in the new heavens, in the new earth, for what will be permanent and everlasting. You know what? The first Adam broke at the dawn of creation, the second Adam, the Son of Man, Jesus, restored with his perfect life. Where the first Adam disobeyed and brought sin and separation and unrest, Jesus, the second Adam, obeyed and took our sin and restored and gave us rest. Jesus redeemed and repaired what had been lost since Genesis. Creation had been undone, sin had been brought into the world, had broken and warped God's covenant. Only Jesus could restore it. Only Jesus can make for a better promise. And one day Jesus' return will usher in God's promised rest that's in him. And this story that God's been weaving from before time always has been about Jesus. Jesus was and is the one who restores us to God. And so we, like the Pharisees in Luke 6, are faced with the person of Jesus, the Lord of the Sabbath. The God who made what they very ironically accuse him of breaking. As I was reading through this, I'm just like imagining how they're saying this to the person who's created the world, and they're they're telling him what this day is supposed to be like, attesting him of the command that he ordained. While they use the Sabbath to trap him, Jesus isn't held by it. The creator cannot be owned or controlled by what he created. And even while he perfectly practices it, being obedient to it, the Sabbath belongs to him. He's Lord of it. The Sabbath all along has pointed to Jesus' coming and restoration work. And wow, the patience of Jesus, who knows their thoughts, knows their thoughts, their hardness of hearts, what they're thinking about him, and he chooses instead to question them, to point them back to the heart and goodness of what he created. Time and again, there's this pattern in Jesus' earthly ministry where he willingly observes the Mosaic Law, including the Sabbath, worshiping in the synagogue, sending a leopard, a leper that was healed to be seen by the priests before going back into the community, traveling to these annual festivals, honoring the purification laws and census tax. And yes, here in Luke 6, he follows God's original design for the Sabbath. Yet he does this voluntarily, doing it completely, perfectly for his mission to save sinners by obeying the law and burying our sins and curse on the cross. So how do we enter into this rest? Only through Jesus. Where Joshua, whose name literally translates to Yahweh saves, was unable to give the Israelites full rest when they enter the promised land, our Savior Jesus succeeded and accomplished it permanently. Hebrews 4 8 through 11 says, For if Joshua had given them rest, God would not have spoken of another day later on. So then there remains a Sabbath rest for the people of God, for whoever has entered God's rest has also rested from his works as God did from his. So then there remains a Sabbath rest for the people of God. For whoever has entered God's rest has also rested from his works as God did from his. Let us therefore strive to enter that rest, so that no one may fall by the same sort of disobedience. It's funny how it uses the word striving. Striving sounds so much like work, but who are we striving in? Our striving here is alluding to our allegiance, our alignment to Christ, who has given us eternal rest, an eternal promise. We lay down our works, our thinking that we ourselves can appease God, and we rest in Christ. And so, friends, our Sabbath rest is both a visual and the practice of the gospel in and through our lives every single week. Jesus did what we could never do. Joshua led his people into the promised land. Jesus leads us into something everlasting, and that's relationship with God. You know, you may have grown up in a church or an environment of performance or perfection, or I'm going to raise my hand first that I struggle with that every single day, of thinking that I'm enough and I can do it on my own. In Jesus, we see a better way, a way that works. Pastor Kent Hughes in his study on Luke says that by the time that Jesus had arrived on the scene, the Pharisees had added 39 addendums to the Sabbath laws. These exotic legalisms of like how to reap and thresh and winnow and pluck, in other words, I'm not quite sure what they mean, but they involve agriculture. All these were added to it over the course of these many years. The Pharisees had taken God's laws that were good and corrupted them. They twisted the design and command of rest and communion with God and turned it into a bunch of do's and don'ts, detached from relationship. And honestly, they'd made so many rules and regulations that I'm imagining it was almost impossible to really know if you were doing what was right and to actually commune with God. It had turned into legalism. Without relationship, without remembrance of who God was and is and his goodness, it turned into dry performance and ritual. And so Jesus tells them a story of King David and his men. When David was on the run and desperate for food, literally starving and about to die, and they come to Ahimelech, the priest, and they ask for mercy. And when the priest says that all he has is the bread of the presence and offers it as long as David and his men are ceremoniously clean, which they are, that they can have it. And what's interesting is this bread was actually the representation of God's strength and nourishment for his people. It was only supposed to be for the priests. And the priest gives it because he, unlike the current leaders of Israel, they unhe understood God's design was for mercy over sacrifice, to know him more than burnt offerings. And here we see the heart of the Pharisees is to break the backs of the people while Jesus came to carry the cross that belonged to you and me. One of my favorite verses in the Bible is Matthew 11, 28 through 30. And it goes like this Come to me all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest, rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light. Jesus gets the heart of life in these words. Working and striving is so much more than a nine-to-five nonstop parenting and homework. We all know so well that the labor of life is often life itself. And Jesus, who for 33 years lived as we do, can and does. He does. He understands, he empathizes with you. He felt calluses crack. He rubbed sore feet after 10-mile walks in really bad sandals. He watched his friends abandoned him, and he felt the hurt of family members mocking him, and he felt the nails go through. He was hung on a cross. He knows the groanings of creation. He knows yours, of his church. And in Christ we have a Savior King who perfectly knows our needs and he satisfies. You know, just as God had implemented a law that allowed the lowly to pass through fields and to pick these grain heads to eat so that they wouldn't starve. And just as he brought manna from heaven for 40 years in the desert every day, and just as he supplied miraculously in the seventh year of the land to rest, just as he multiplied a few loaves to feed a few thousands, he gave himself the bread of life. And all we have, all we are, all the work we do, all the good we're given, all of it, it all comes from him. And the greatest work we could never do ourselves, he endured on the cross. He is our salvation. And so we rest in him. We yoke ourselves to him, and through him we are freely forgiven. You know, a yoke is a funny thing. And so, students, if you don't know what a yoke is, or if anyone doesn't know what a yoke is, it's kind of a funny thing that they would actually put this between two oxen and it would be what they'd use to plow the fields along, and so they would work this together. And so when Jesus says that he is asking us to yoke ourselves to him, he's asking us to lay down our own yoke and to partner with him. And I was just thinking even this morning of the beauty of that of Jesus is calling us to be alongside of him and that he can bear the weight for us, and that he wants to be close to us. He doesn't just say like I'm gonna do it all for you. He says, I want to be near to you, I want to abide with you and walk through this life with you. He wants to feel the pain that you're feeling, he can handle it. And so we rest in him. We celebrate, we remember, we rejoice in this. And this, from before time began, God has been a God of love and relationship. It's why He made you for His glory and pleasure, that we would be satisfied in Him. You know, I felt this morning too, I didn't have this in here, but just to say that the thing that can often I think keep us, or I'll speak for myself, is uh God was working in my heart and my life this morning because he's good, is that the thing that can keep us from this and that I can hide behind in my work is fear, is believing that I can do it myself and just the worry of really laying it down. And I was listening to a worship song this morning that the gospel is rest and that I'll say it again and again until I believe it. But in order for me to pick up what God has for me, I have to lay down what I have. You have to lay down your fears, you have to lay down your working and your striving. And so to hammer this point home, Luke takes us through this the second story. And this time it's around not eating, but healing. And so when Lindsay and I are downstairs with the kids, um we love to talk about all like the little things that you notice with what Jesus does and how every detail matters, and how every healing is different, and how everything he says is really unique. And this healing is really no different. It's Jesus calls and has the man stand in front of him and all the religious leaders. And then before healing him, he turns and asks the Pharisees, not if he can heal, so he he turns it on him, which he's apt to do, but if he can do good. And based on the reading, there's this awkward moment of silence where Jesus is looking at the Pharisees and they're looking back at him, and I'm imagining the guy's like, What's what's going on here? No one answers him because Jesus has drilled down to their hypocrisy, and he just waits for this answer. And then instead of touching the man with a withered hand with a word, Jesus calls for him to stretch out his hand. A hand that's shriveled and atrophied. I'm sure there's some embarrassment of wanting to hide it, and he's having to put it out in front of these Pharisees to see. It's a man who's known years of pain and all see with their own eyes as this miracle of restoration happens. And here Jesus puts this now healed man before them to show what God has done since Genesis 2. He brings life and restoration to show his goodness and mercy, and that he's the giver of life, that he is the Lord of the Sabbath. See, the Pharisees had missed the force for the trees, they'd focus on the requirement of the law and missed the giver of it and its purpose. Jesus, who so often did touch lepers, who pulled, we did this story downstairs a few weeks ago, guys. If you remember, he pulled seeking Peter out of the water before he calmed the waters, who set children on his knee and laughed with him, he didn't touch this man to heal him. And said, Jesus, by the word of his mouth, as he created our world with the word, Jesus, the word made flesh, Jesus who was from before the beginning, restored what sin had long ago broken. And here's the answer to why the Sabbath is such good news. God who created this world for his glory, who created humanity in his image, to be known and loved by him in a way that the Bible says angels long to understand. It's this God who does good on the Sabbath. With echoes from the creation story of God seeing all he had made was good, he continues to do good, to bring life, to restore, to make himself known to those whom he loves. Jesus is pointing out to the Pharisees and to all who hear him and to you and me that his healing and saving sinners is the same purpose of the Sabbath, and that's to bring life and health and freedom. That sin that once kept us from rest and restoration has come in Jesus yoking himself to us. They're just completely wrong in understanding its purpose. God had commanded rest that he would be known and worshipped in relationship. The Sabbath is never meant to be something that controls us or to be a gotcha. It's meant as a gift from the very best gift giver. And so for us, gospel collective, we celebrate. We remember, we rest in God on Sunday, the Lord's day, the Lord of the Sabbath, Sunday, the day when Jesus rose from the dead and restored what had been broken, when death was defeated, when what had been promised came into full reality. And the reason we gather on Sundays, the reason we do what we do each and every week in joy and gratitude, we gather on Sabbath to celebrate. And rest is a gospel reminder in our frenetic lives where we try to do everything, where we try to be omnipresent and omniscient, if we remember that we are not God. And instead we rest in Him and He lovingly every time receives us. And we can so easily bury ourselves in work and busyness and in meetings and filling our calendars. And I think if we're honest, I think the danger is that we're afraid to slow down and to be quiet, to be aware of what we are holding and the pains that are just under the surface, that we'll fall behind in a world that spins madly on. But the good news is Jesus offers to walk through every moment of life with you, to shoulder that load. And most of all, Jesus has given you eternal rescue. And his gentleness and love and direction is telling us to let him be Lord of our lives and Lord of the Sabbath if we'll let him. I do want to speak to something that maybe some of you are already thinking about or have wondered about, and that's how the Sabbath day, which Jesus practiced for his time on earth, it had been practiced for thousands of years, that Israel practiced was on Saturday. And today is Sunday. Now, our rest now coincides with Jesus, the Lord of the Sabbath resurrection. So I was trying to think how to put this in. John Owen, who's an old Puritan preacher, said it best, I think, and he references 1 Corinthians 5. He says, The old things are passed away, and behold, all things are becoming new. The old law, the old covenant, the old worship, old Sabbath, all that was peculiar unto the covenant of works, as such, are all antiquated and gone. The old creation is disposed anew in Christ Jesus. And to that end, we rest in the work of Christ. Jesus is coming, his dying, his resurrecting, his ascension, his return, it has moved our Sabbath from Saturday to Sunday. As we no longer celebrate the first creation, but the coming renewal of creation. We rejoice, we sing, we we lift hands, we learn, we commune, we pray, we live and move and have our being in this truth. We rest our lives completely in Christ. We recognize that we are now a new creation in him. And this day, today, Sunday, Sabbath day, a holy day, a set apart day, we rejoice and are glad in it. I also want us to know something about what Jesus says in the story. It's how he asks the Pharisees if it's right to do good on the Sabbath. And it's this moment of loving grace that has a very tangible takeaway for us today. You know, we have nurses in this room, police officers, pastors, firefighters, chaplains, and lots of other jobs around this room that necessitate work for the good and of the world in our society. And in this moment, Jesus is pointing out the heart of Sabbath is never ceasing from doing good and caring for one another. You know, I don't want to live in a world that if I get in a car accident on a Sunday, I gotta wait until 1201 on Monday to get some help. So for some of you, your Sabbath day might have to look different. It may be different day of the week, or you have to be flexible. And this is okay, again, if this takes us back to Genesis, that from the moment the sin came into the world, the world has been groaning, awaiting this full restoration. And so we have those who mend and heal and fix and protect and bandage and hold and help all different times of the day because our world is broken from sin. But my encouragement to you is to be tenacious and to be aware of still finding your day of rest. It is worth it. So as we move towards close, you may be wanting or not wanting, I guess you can decide, uh, some specific practical measures for your Sabbath. And I really did debate going back and forth if this would be worthwhile. And there's plenty of books and podcasts out there that will tell you exactly what your Sabbath day should look like. But to me, there's some very obvious irony of those Pharisees and the 39 addendums that they put in. So where I landed is instead to share what God's been working in my own life around the Sabbath within four categories. And my ask of you, my real ask of you, is that you think through these categories regarding your Sabbath rest. And I promise you, you will never regret giving more of yourself in union to Jesus. You know, a story goes that years ago, Pastor John Orberg asked Dallas Willard, who was a well-known Christian philosopher who's since gone to be with Jesus, he said, What do I need to do to be spiritually healthy? And after a long pause, Willard said, You must ruthlessly eliminate hurry from your life. So Orberg wrote these words down and then looked up and said, Yeah, that's a good one. Now, what else? And Willard's reply was, there is nothing else. Friends, we must lay down the frantic, the busy, the hurry if we are to commune, if we are to Sabbath with our Lord. To enjoy the life and fullness he offers, we have to be willing to lay down the things that keep us from seeing him, from knowing him and experiencing him. If you're waiting for life to slow down, if I'm waiting for life to slow down, we're gonna wake up one day and realize life has passed us by. And chances are the people around you, the circumstances you're in, the responsibilities you have aren't gonna get up and give back time to you. And so just as you trusted Christ with your salvation, just as you rest your eternity in him, you really do have to ask yourself if you're willing to trust him with your schedule, your responsibilities, your work, your boundaries, your relationships, your life. Do you trust him enough to hand over your Sabbath day and say, Jesus, how can this be a day where I glorify you more, love you more, receive you more? So the four words that Jesus models again and again that we'll see as we go through Luke over the next year, that my hope is that you can think through, talk about in small groups, talk about with family, talk about at house church, that Jesus again and again modeled to his disciples and that he models for us. So the first word, and they all start with the letter S just to make it easier. It's always easier that way. So first word silence. Our world is loud. Time and again, God shows himself in the quiet. So silence. For my own life, I've started making the habit of taking my phone, which is always really loud, and I put it in my dresser drawer for the day on Sundays when I go home from church. There's no way for me, I'm speaking for myself, for me personally, that I'm able to really commune with God and to be present with my wife and kids if my phone is out. So I am choosing to fill the silence with deeper moments, with family, deeper moments with the Lord, with prayer and reading. I'm turning myself towards God and away from the thing that I know is keeping me from Him. Second word, simplicity. So for our family, on Sundays, for us, it doesn't mean that we don't do activities, but we try to have a pretty intentional flow of it being a day where it's uncomplicated, and I can enjoy. I wrote a second cup of coffee. I'm a fourth cup of coffee. So a fourth cup of coffee, chats with neighbors, friends over from church, strolls through our garden, walks with a family, an extra chapter of a book, lots of good snacking. Allow yourself to enjoy the gifts that God has given you, the people that He's put in your life, the places that He's blessed you with, the conversations that you want to have. Sabbath should not mean a blank life. It's the opposite. It should be a joy-filled, fruitful, wonderful day. Third, slowing. This one's tough. And I will tell you, the world does not want you to slow down. This isn't about something that we do out of laziness. These words really all work in tandem. And you know, if I love, you know, if if I'm honest with you and I want to be honest with you, this is one that we all really need to practice more of is to slow down. You know, this is intentionally laying down our striving and our doing. And it's, you know, it really reminded me of that um the Greek story of Sisyphus is pushing that rock up and it going back down and then pushing the rock up and it coming back down. And, you know, I don't want our lives to be this way where we're just constantly moving along. And really, what Jesus wants us to do is to rest and slow down, lay down our troubles in Him. Jesus wants to bless you with knowing Him deeply. And so this could be, you know, family games, this could be a nap, this could be a park bench, sitting by the beach and just pondering a verse or something that Lindsay told me, just you know, deep rest while praying. It's good for us. Be in places where God blesses you with the wonder of his love and his creation. Last one is solitude. So there's at least nine times in Luke where Jesus goes off in solitude to be with the Father. So my encouragement to you is to find time on your Sabbath day to be alone with Jesus. Don't give yourself to him. And one of my favorite things to do when Lindsay and I have just haven't been able to connect over a few months is to send the kids to school and I take a day off, and we just are with each other. And there's nothing super big, there's nothing, all these things planned. It really is just us turning towards each other and seeing each other. In fact, a lot of times the goal is not to fill it with all sorts of other stuff, it's just to be with that person. That's what Jesus wants from us. He wants to fill us. This is never about the doing, it truly is about being with the Father. It's being with Jesus. And those are my favorite days. And Jesus wants your favorite days to be with him. If you make the pattern of your life one where you are abiding in his presence, turning towards him, you will be filled with purpose and joy that you could never imagine. Augustine of Hippo famously said, You have made us for yourself, and our heart is restless until it rests in you. It's too good to only read it once. He says, You have made us for yourself, and our heart is restless until it rests in you. So go into the silence with God, simplify your day, slow down and be with him. So to close, the last question: what does the Sabbath point to? So our chief end, your chief end, your purpose, if you belong to Christ, is to bring glory to God. Please don't enter into Sundays, into a Sabbath day thinking that it's about can and can't. Enter into with the joy of giving yourselves head, heart, mind, body, and soul and spirit to your Savior King. Pastor Ray Ortlin so aptly said it this way the point of the Sabbath is a dress rehearsal for a future eternity of glad rest in God. It's built into your DNA. If you are in Christ, God has given you the blessed gift of a Sunday rest in him, and it readies us for what's to come. So then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more. And I saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man. He will dwell with them, and they will be his people, and God himself will be with them as their God. He will wipe away Every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more. Neither shall there be mourning or crying or pain, for the former things have passed away. And he who was sitting on the throne said, Behold, I am making all things new. God's plan from the very beginning, the reason for Sabbath, the purpose we all long for is found in knowing your Maker. And God, who is rich in mercy and love, offers to know him as Father, to dwell with him, abide with him forever, to enter into his personal, eternal rest. He is making all things new. And what we know in part today, we will one day know in full. But until then, God offers for you to taste his goodness if we would only choose to rest in him. Come, Lord Jesus. Let's pray. Well, God, we love you. We are amazed at your kindness, at your grace. That just as your hands were stretched out wide on the cross in love, your hands are outstretched even now, always waiting for us to run to you. That you smile on us, you sing over us. Help us, O Lord, to not make this a day about do's and don'ts, but that we would make it a day of love, of worship, collectively, individually, that God, that we would be moved by you to know you more and to know, to know the deepest of our beings, mind, soul, whole body, that we're made for your glory, we're made for your pleasure, and that you sing over us in love. God, we love you, we adore you, we thank you for this day. Thank you for being Lord of the Sabbath. Thank you for an eternal rest that's to come. Thank you that you'll make all things new. Amen.