The Savior Sabbaths Sinners

Pentecost 2

June 7, 2015

Mark 2:27

The Savior Sabbaths Sinners

In the name of the Father and of † the Son and of the Holy Spirit.

In the beginning God created rest.

By the seventh day God had finished the work He had been doing; so on the seventh day He rested from all His work. And God blessed the seventh day and made it holy, because on it He rested from all the work of creating that He had done. (Genesis 2:2-3)

God didn't rest because He was tired. He finished His work by giving us the gift of rest, because we get tired. By setting aside a special day every week, God has answered your prayer before you prayed it.

The prayer I'm talking about is your request that you have made in the past to have more time, "If only there was another day this week!" Consider this. Instead of thinking that God never gives you an extra day to the seven-day week, consider how God has already given you a special day of rest added to the six-day week.

The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath. (Mark 2:27)

Sadly just as we abuse the good of work during the week, we spoil even His gift of rest. We make the Sabbath, the day of rest, about ourselves. We do this in two ways. We either compete to be better "resters" than others or we spend our rest devoted only to pleasing our whims.

The best comic strip every created is and always will be Calvin and Hobbes. He's a little boy who thinks deep thoughts and then acts like boor. His stuffed tiger Hobbes often acts as his foil. And during the summer, Calvin is often in great anxiety about having enough fun. By worrying about how every day is closer to the start of school, fun becomes work to be squeezed out of every moment. How silly and how true of us!

In the same way we can turn the gift of rest into work by enjoying it as tradition, but never more than ritual. This slide into routine aided and abetted by a failure to ponder what you receive in God's house. You assume you know and so you never say it. This routine behavior that resides in our houses should be as troubling as a child who never asks their parents questions or a parent who never says their kids, "I love you."

Fight the good fight by warding off the easy painless temptation of treating Sunday morning like a chore by doing the good work of listening to Jesus tell you every day, "You're a wretched lazy sinner who rests when you should work and works when you should rest. Therefore I died for you and I forgive you. I love you for My own sake."

The flip side of treating the Sabbath, God's day of rest, as work, is to fling ourselves headlong into the pursuit of pleasure. Sunday rolls around and most heads are asleep or on a boat or swinging a club or down in a garden. Anywhere but in God's house. And it's never enough. It's always the pursuit of pleasure. You have to get out of bed sometime, you have to get off the boat sometime, golf is waste of time, and the weeds always win. You could use all your time having fun, and you'd never have for keeps.

Lest you get a big head, you daydream during church and think about what you're going to be doing later today. For all of us, let us repent and trust the Gospel, trust Christ, who finished the work of salvation and then rested in His grave on the Sabbath.

The Sabbath is rest from our Lord to His people. The people who love this world always waste their time while working and resting. But God's people enjoy this special day of rest as time to be refreshed and fed through our ears and mouths with Christ Himself. He sabbaths us, He rests us by having us in His presence. This is how rest was in the beginning, is now, and will be forever.

The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath. So the Son of Man is Lord even of the Sabbath. (Mark 2:27-28)

Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners—of whom I am the worst. Alleluia! Amen!