Christians and the Sabbath

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I want to invite you to take out your Bibles and turn with me to Mark chapter 3.
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We're going to be focusing our attention tonight on verses 1 to 6 and because many of you were not here last week, I feel the need to at least give a little bit of an overview of what we talked about in our last message because we are in a situation where last week I was supposed to do chapter 2, 23 to chapter 3 verse 6 and I didn't get there so we're sort of in the middle of a study and so if you weren't here last week, I at least want to bring you up to speed as to where we are.
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In chapter 2, Jesus begins to face the opponents of his ministry whereas in chapter 1 we see primarily his ministry going out into the area surrounding where he was and he was ministering to people and he was healing people and many good things were happening and then immediately in chapter 2 we begin to see opposition, the opposition coming from what is described in the Gospel of Mark as the scribes of the Pharisees.
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The scribes of the Pharisees came to Jesus and challenged him.
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The first thing they challenged him about was that he forgave sin.
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Who is this man who forgives sin, makes himself equal with God? The second thing they challenged him about was that he made friends with sinners.
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So not only was he forgiving sin but he was also calling a tax collector to follow him.
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He called Levi to follow him and called him his friend and he ate at Levi's house and ate with all of Levi's friends who of course because he was excommunicated from the polite society of Judaism would not have had friends that were in right standing so all of his friends were sinners too and when Jesus ate with them the Pharisees saw that and said who is this man who eats with sinners? So the first challenge was that he forgave sin, the second challenge was that he befriended sinners and the third challenge was that he refused to keep the fast and you'll remember when I taught on that I said the fast was not a biblical requirement, it was not a legal requirement of the law of Moses, it was a tradition that was held among the Pharisees that you were to fast two times a week and Jesus' apostles didn't fast and so they came and said John's disciples fast, the Pharisees' disciples fast but your disciples do not fast and Jesus responded to them in that regard.
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Well the last issue that we find in chapter 2 is the issue of the Sabbath and as I said last week and I do encourage you if you weren't here to please go back and listen because I don't want to reiterate everything that I said but what we talked about last week was they were saying that Jesus had broken God's law because when it comes to the fast that was a tradition but not a law, when it came to the other things that they had challenged Jesus on those things were not as clear cut but on this issue they were saying Jesus was a sinner and that he was teaching his disciples to sin because he allowed them to walk through the grain fields on the Sabbath to pluck heads of grain, rub them in their hands to knock the husk off and eat the grain to fill their stomachs and they said that Jesus had taught his disciples to break the Sabbath.
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Now my point last week was to stress that Jesus did not ever break the Sabbath.
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And my reason for stressing that is because Jesus never sinned.
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He kept the law of Moses perfectly.
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He says I didn't come to abolish the law but to fulfill the law and so we talked about why we don't believe Jesus sinned and why we don't believe what the disciples did was sinning.
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But what the disciples were doing was they were going against the accepted traditions of the Pharisees and the accepted traditions of the Pharisees were so wildly exaggerated regarding the Sabbath that they even had a certain number of steps that could be taken.
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And if you took one step beyond what was allowed on the Sabbath then you did something constituting work.
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And I believe it's 1,999.
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If you take a 2,000th step then you've constituted work.
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Now they didn't have Apple watches back then or step counters so I don't know how they came up with 1,999 to 2,000 if they literally walked around and counted the steps.
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But the point of the matter is they had traditions that were unbiblical and Jesus was not bound to their traditions.
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So even though we can say Jesus never broke the law we have to also say Jesus never bound himself to their traditions.
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Jesus was willing to look at their, and I would say their perversion of the law.
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Because what he says at the end of Mark is he says the Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath.
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And what he's saying there is he's saying you've taken a blessing and you've turned it into a curse.
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You've taken something that was supposed to be good and by adding law after law after law and from what I understand like 20 something chapters of laws as to what could be done on the Sabbath that was written in extra biblical Jewish literature.
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I mean how do you get that many chapters is because they're adding one thing after another after another as Jesus said laying burdens on men's backs that even they themselves couldn't bear.
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Creating a system of legalism that was intended to keep them in power.
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And by the way that's often what legalism does.
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Is it keeps the person who knows the laws and enforces the laws in power.
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Because if I'm the one who can tell you what you can and can't do or else you're going to be outside of God's covenant people then guess who's in charge.
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And by the way church history tells us this very thing because this is the very thing the Roman Catholic Church did when it began to come into power.
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It began to establish new and unholy laws.
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Things like the selling of indulgences and things like that which were unholy and ungodly but they were established why to keep themselves in power.
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And established an ungodly legalism that goes on to this very day.
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So that was what we talked about last time.
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Well the situation regarding the Sabbath doesn't end in chapter 2.
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It continues into chapter 3 but this time it gets even more personal.
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Because in the last situation Jesus' disciples are in a grain field they're plucking heads of grain and they challenge them why are you doing what's not lawful on the Sabbath.
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Jesus responds.
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But now we're going to see the one and only time where the text will tell us that Jesus gets angry.
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Now we could argue that Jesus was pretty angry when he whipped the guys in the temple and drove them out.
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Now we could argue that.
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So I'm not saying it's the only time we ever see Jesus angry but it's the only time the word is used because in that sense we don't read that word.
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But in this it says what they do actually causes Christ to be angry.
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So that's what we're going to see today.
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It's involving the Sabbath.
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Involving the healing of a man and we'll see Jesus' response.
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So we'll read beginning at verse 1.
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It says, Again he entered the synagogue and a man was there with a withered hand and they watched Jesus to see whether he would heal him on the Sabbath so that they might accuse him.
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And he said to the man with the withered hand, Come here.
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And he said to them, Is it lawful on the Sabbath to do good or to do harm, to save life or to kill? But they were silent.
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And he looked around them with anger, grieved at their hardness of heart, and said to the man, Stretch out your hand.
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He stretched it out and his hand was restored.
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And verse 6 tells the story.
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The Pharisees went out and immediately held counsel with the Herodians against him how to destroy him.
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Let's pray.
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Father, thank you.
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Thank you for this word.
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May it now be, Lord, that we understand it better through our instruction of it.
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And may your Holy Spirit be the teacher.
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May you keep me from error.
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And may your Spirit guide us into all truth.
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In Christ's name.
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Now, when we begin this narrative, it's interesting what we find because it seems as if the opponents of Jesus have made the Sabbath their key issue.
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And this is the one that they feel like they are going to be able to find a way to get rid of him.
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Now, I want to just for a moment, and you can interject if you'd like, but doesn't it seem interesting that at this point in Mark's gospel, Jesus hasn't seemingly done anything that would incur the hatred of these men.
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All he's doing is helping people and healing people and loving people.
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Now, one might say, well, we could go to John and we could go back and we could see in John some things that may have happened before this event.
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And that is true because John gives us a fuller picture of the life of Jesus and there are some events that happened before this.
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Jesus calling out the Pharisees in certain areas and even the fact that this may have followed the first cleansing of the temple.
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In John, there seems to be two times where Jesus goes in and drives out the temple sellers, the people who are selling in the temple.
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John says it happens very early in the ministry.
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The other gospels say it happens very late in his ministry, so there's a possibility that it happened twice.
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So, it could be that in their mind there's good reasons to keep an eye on this religious rabbi, teacher, zealous man.
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But from Mark's perspective and what we've read so far, Jesus has not seemingly done anything to incur their wrath except he does not recognize their traditions.
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And they held power through these traditions.
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They held authority and sway in the life of people through these traditions.
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And so, on the Sabbath, they know they can catch him.
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They know that they can find what they need, the evidence that they need against Jesus.
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And so, it's interesting if you just read, it says, again he entered the synagogue and a man was there with a withered hand.
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Now, that by itself doesn't say a whole lot except for what we know about the man he is.
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And somehow his hand has become disfigured, whether it's a natural ailment, whether he was injured.
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Whatever has happened, his hand is no longer useful.
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There's some traditions that surround this man.
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I think one of the traditions is something to the effect that he was like a stonemason and his hand wouldn't work anymore and couldn't do his job.
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So, therefore, not only did he have a withered hand, but now he's poor because he can't do his work.
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So, there's other things that go with that.
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One of the other Gospels, and I don't remember which one it is, I'd have to look.
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It says it was his right hand.
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Oh, it's Luke.
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It's Luke chapter 6.
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It says it was his right hand which would be important because the vast majority of people are right handed and the right hand is typically the hand used for work.
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And therefore, if it's his right hand that was withered, it was probably keeping him from work and putting him in a situation of desperation.
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So, this is what little we know about the situation.
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But verse 2, it says, And they watched Jesus.
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Now, who is they? They haven't been mentioned in chapter 3.
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They force us back into chapter 2.
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To find the antecedent of that pronoun, we have to go back into the previous chapter.
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And the previous chapter is that we find the they, the last pronoun that is in the plural to refer to the they because the they isn't talking about Jesus and the they isn't talking about the man with the withered hand.
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The last people we see that the they would refer to is the scribes of the Pharisees.
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So, these men have made it their mission to spy out Jesus and find fault with Him.
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And so, they watched Jesus to see whether He would heal on the Sabbath.
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For what reason? The text says, So that they might accuse Him.
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That's their only goal.
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They're not there to see if He's true.
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They're not there to examine whether or not He is godly or whether or not what He is saying is accurate.
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They have a mission and their mission is find fault.
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Boy, have you ever met anybody like that? I don't want to get too far in the weeds, but when it is your mission in life to find fault, you don't have to look very far.
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I've met people in my life who, it seemed like the very moment you met them, they were trying to pick you apart, take everything away from you.
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Right? Well, that's what these guys are.
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These guys are there for no other reason than to find something to hang on Christ, to accuse Him.
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And He, now we're looking at a personal pronoun in the singular, and it's referring to Jesus.
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And He said to the man with the withered hand, we know it's not the man with the withered hand because that's who He's speaking to, so this is Jesus.
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And He said to the man with the withered hand, come here.
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So now the stage is set.
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You've got a man who is functionally crippled.
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He is in the audience.
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Jesus has stood.
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He has beckoned that man to Him.
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And now the men who have come to see if Jesus is going to do what they hoped He would do so that they could bring an accusation against Him, they're primed and ready for this moment.
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Come here, Jesus said.
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But He doesn't heal him immediately.
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Before Jesus heals this man, He asks the scribes of the Pharisees a question.
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Notice what He says in verse 4.
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And He said to them, is it lawful on the Sabbath to kill the Pharisees? To do good or to do harm? To save life or to kill? But they were silent.
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Now, very quickly, I want to make a simple point.
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I don't think these men were ready for Jesus to say anything to them.
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And the fact that He speaks to them, they are dumbstruck.
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He says they remain silent.
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But I want you to consider what Jesus is asking them because He knows the very reason why they are there on that day.
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They are there to catch Him in a Sabbath breach.
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They are there on the Sabbath to see if He is going to break the law.
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So Jesus looks at them and He asks them a very simple question.
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It's not a simple question.
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It's actually a complex question.
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But it's simple in the sense that it should have a simple answer.
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But Jesus is asking it in a very specific way for a very specific reason.
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He says, is it lawful on the Sabbath to do good? Now, before we go to the second, He says or harm.
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But just for a moment, this would be a natural yes because there are a lot of good things that they already did on the Sabbath such as attend the synagogue.
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They were already in the synagogue and attending synagogue was good.
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And they knew that they were allowed to do certain things such as acts of mercy which were allowed to be done on the Sabbath.
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If a person was dying, they were allowed to administer life-saving care to a person who was dying.
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If their blood is pouring out of them and they can stop the bleeding, they were allowed to do that on the Sabbath.
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They knew there were things they were allowed to do that were good.
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So in a sense, that's a simple yes.
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But Jesus didn't give them a yes or no question.
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He didn't say, is it okay to do good on the Sabbath? He says, is it lawful on the Sabbath to do good or to do harm? Now, let me ask you a question.
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Is it ever lawful to do harm? Not really.
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I mean, one might find some legal loophole where harm might be done for the greater good or something.
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But in general, the answer is no.
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So why does Jesus say, is it lawful to do good or to do harm? Well, here's what I think he means.
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And I do think this is, again, my opinion, but I think what Jesus is saying here is, I'm doing good and you all are here to do harm.
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You see, they had come for one reason, to accuse Jesus of something wrong.
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They didn't come to the synagogue to worship.
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They didn't come to encourage one another or to lift one another up or to praise God.
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They came as spies to try to accuse Jesus for the purpose of seeing him be deposed and possibly even destroyed.
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We'll see that in a bit.
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They're there to do harm.
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They're doing something on the Sabbath that wouldn't even be right if it was Sunday through Friday.
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You get the point.
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Is it right to do good on the Sabbath or to do harm? I'm doing good.
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You're here to do harm.
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But he doesn't stop there.
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He says, is it right, is it lawful to save life or to kill? Now, again, simple question.
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Is it ever right to kill? Well, we could argue on the battlefield.
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There are times where killing is necessary.
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But in this context, Jesus is referring to, I think, the sixth commandment which says, do not, do what? Commit murder.
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Because that's what these men want to do to him.
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And might I add, they would do it just as happily on a Sabbath as any other day.
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Because they would believe they were doing God's work.
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And they would justify themselves if they had the opportunity to kill Jesus whatever day it was.
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So Jesus lays before them this juxtaposition between himself and them.
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Is it lawful to do good or to do harm? I am doing good and you are doing harm.
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Is it lawful to give life or to kill? I am here so that they may have life and you are here to take my life.
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He's confronting them at their very core.
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And this is why they were functionally muted.
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He says, but they kept silent.
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They didn't have anything to say.
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What could they say? Verse 5, And he looked around at them with anger.
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This is the part I mentioned earlier.
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Looked at them with anger.
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Grieved at their hardness of heart.
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Just two thoughts here.
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The connection between anger and grief that we see in this passage.
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And for a moment, Jesus is saying to them, I want to ask a very basic question.
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This is not a trick question.
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I am not trying to lead you into a theological conundrum whereby you will have to dig your way out of some torture puzzle I put you into theologically.
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Does it anger God when we sin? I think we could say yes, the Bible says God is angry, sinned.
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God hates sin.
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There are six things God hates.
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Yea, seven are an abomination to him.
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He hates it.
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But it also grieves his heart.
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Especially in regard to believers when we are told not to do what to the Holy Spirit? Not to grieve the Spirit.
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Anger and grief often go together is my point.
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Jesus looks at these men and in one sense it says he is angry because of their hardness of heart.
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That is what it says.
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It says here that he looked around at them with anger, grieved at their hardness of heart.
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Jesus knows the hearts of men and he knows what they are there to do.
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And he is both angered and grieved.
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And he said to the man, stretch out your hand.
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Now here is the part that I love how the Bible just says things like it is not a big deal.
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Jesus walked to them on the water.
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Yea, that happens every day.
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No it doesn't.
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But the Bible just says it like it is nothing.
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The reason why I say that is because read, this isn't even a whole verse by itself.
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It is like the latter half of the verse.
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He stretched it out and his hand was restored.
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I have never in my life seen anything like that.
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I have seen a plethora of false teachers claiming that they have healing powers and do that, but I have never seen nobody whose hand was contorted and broken and withered and he leans forward and he lifts out that withered hand and before he can even get it fully out, it stretches out to the new young hand with all of the muscles and tendons and strength that he had not had.
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And now he is able to open his hand and close his hand and he sees this miracle of miracles happen right before his eyes.
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And you would think that any man who has an ounce of heart and a little bit of heart and a little bit of strength would fall to his knees and say, bless the Lord of Heaven.
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But the Pharisees, their hearts were hardened and they did not care.
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They didn't care a man's hand was fixed.
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They didn't care a man's life was changed.
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They didn't care healing had been administered.
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They didn't care that someone's spirit which had been broken was now restored.
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They didn't care about any of that.
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And we see that because of verse 6 where it says, the Pharisees went out and immediately held counsel with the Herodians against him how to destroy him.
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Now I don't want to overlook this, but I am not going to go too far into it.
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The Herodians interestingly enough mention here this is a political sect that had allegiance to Herod the king.
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They were not necessarily a religious group.
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The major religious groups were the Pharisees and the Sadducees.
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But the Herodians were a political group that were connected to Herod.
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But what's interesting is we do see them often in league with the Pharisees because Christ's presence threatened their power.
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So they weren't concerned about the religion.
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They were concerned about the power.
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And I would argue that the Pharisees had a similar concern.
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They were concerned about the power.
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This man is coming and threatening our position.
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So we see Jesus having healed this man and we see him showing anger and grief toward the Pharisees and we see them change not one lick, but instead they continue on with their murderous rage and their desire to kill him.
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Now last week I said one of the things I wanted to do was I wanted to address the subject of the Sabbath.
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I've got a few minutes left tonight so I'm going to do what I had hoped to do.
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Because when we talk about the subject of the Sabbath, this can become somewhat of a majorly divisive issue even in the church today.
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And we find ourselves honestly in a very similar situation where often times our traditions become the lens through which we see these things and we argue about traditions.
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What can you do? What can't you do? Are we going to obey the Sabbath? Are we not? And that becomes an issue.
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And so for the next few minutes I just want to sort of spend just a few minutes talking about the various positions that people hold and what we teach here at Sovereign Grace.
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So real quick let's talk about the four positions on the Sabbath.
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There are four basic positions that people hold.
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When I say people I guess I could say four basic positions that Christians have held regarding the Sabbath law.
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The first one would be called Saturday Sabbatarians.
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The second one would be called Sunday Sabbatarians.
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And I'll just put a little quote underneath that.
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The third position would be known as Lord's Day Observers.
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And finally the fourth position would be called the Fulfillment View.
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Now again I bring this up because Jesus is living his life in the covenantal structure of the Law of Moses.
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But when Jesus dies, buried and resurrects, he said he institutes the New Covenant.
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And the question becomes does the New Covenant have the same law as the Old Covenant? Right away we would say there is at least one major distinction between the Old Covenant and the New Covenant when it comes to the law is nobody tonight brought with them a bull or a goat or a pair of turtle doves.
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Brother Andy wasn't standing there waiting when you came by the door to receive your offering.
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He didn't have an ephod on where he could go and sacrifice on behalf of your sins today.
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Right? And so we would say right away there are structural changes between the Old Covenant of Moses and the New Covenant of Christ.
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The major structural change is that we no longer have a temple.
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The veil of the temple was torn in two.
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We no longer have a place to go make sacrifices.
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The sacrifice was made on the cross tree of Calvary.
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We no longer have a priest who stands and makes intercession because Christ is our high priest.
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That entire system has been abolished.
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Not put on hold, but fulfilled.
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Right? Jesus said I didn't come to abolish the law, I came to fulfill the law.
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And when we go to Hebrews 8 it tells us that when the New Covenant came it made the Old Covenant obsolete.
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It uses that exact word.
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It made the Old Covenant obsolete.
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So the question becomes, in the minds of many, okay, so there are laws that do not continue into the New Covenant.
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And we all agree that those laws include sacrifice, priesthood, all those things which are fulfilled in Christ.
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But the question becomes, where in do you put the Sabbath? And this is divisive.
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This is a big deal.
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And I, about five years ago, four years ago now, maybe five, I did a debate on this subject with a Presbyterian friend of mine, Rob Hamm.
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So I feel fairly confirmed in what I teach and what I believe.
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I wouldn't debate it if I didn't.
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And so I hold a very specific view that I am thankful at least that Brother Andy and Brother Mike hold that view with me.
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But having said that, if you hold a slightly different view on this, it's not going to bar you from membership or anything like that because this is an area where we think Christians can have some liberty as long as they don't try to bind the consciences of others.
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That's where the big issue would be.
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If you want to hold a view and your view doesn't keep you from binding someone else's conscience, then that's fine.
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Am I saying that right, Brother Andy? Would you agree with what I say there? All right.
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So if you said, well, what view do you hold? I don't want to say that yet because if you don't know, I don't want to give away the store.
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I want to tell you what the views are and then I'll tell you where we land.
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The Saturday Sabbatarians make this argument.
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They say, God sanctified the seventh day, which is Saturday, not Sunday, that He sanctified that day in the garden, that He established a creationary ordinance in the garden that the seventh day was to be recognized as holy and that that ordinance has never been rescinded.
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And that when God gave the ordinance to Moses in Exodus, that was the seventh day of the Sabbath.
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All He was doing was repeating what they already were given in Genesis and that's why it says remember the Sabbath because it was something they already had.
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Again, I'm not saying that's the view I hold.
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I'm saying that's their argument.
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Their argument is that the seventh day, Saturday, is the Sabbath and it is perpetual for all time for all people.
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Now, who holds to this view? Well, one right off the rip would be the seventh day Adventists.
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It's in the name.
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They are very committed to seventh day Sabbatarianism, Saturday Sabbatarianism.
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There are also, though, there are also those who call themselves seventh day Baptists.
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And, they are rare, but they are there.
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So, there are some who believe that the Saturday Sabbath is a perpetual moral law and it must be kept for all time.
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And, by the way, if you get into the weeds with some of those folks, they will tell you that worshiping on Sunday is a mark of idolatry.
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They blame it on Constantine.
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They say Constantine introduced Sunday worship and the whole reason why we worship on Sunday is because of an adulteration of the Sabbath.
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Now, they don't all believe that, but that's one of the arguments you will often hear is you need to worship on Saturday because Sunday is, some have even gone to say Sunday worship is the mark of the beast.
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So, it's pretty serious if you really get into the weeds with some folks on that.
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So, Saturday Sabbatarianism is obviously not what we hold to here, but in case you wondered, that's not us.
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But, that is a position.
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The second is known as Sunday Sabbatarianism.
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And, Sunday Sabbatarianism says it is not the seventh day that God hallowed, but that one in seven is hallowed.
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That one day in seven has been made holy and after the resurrection of Christ, we see Sunday as that day that has been made holy, not Saturday.
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And so, Sunday Sabbatarians still believe that it's the Sabbath, but they believe the resurrection of Christ has introduced a new day on which to celebrate the Sabbath.
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So, it's still Sabbatarianism, but it's Sunday Sabbatarianism.
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So, they are saying there is a moral law that began at creation, but it wasn't about the day.
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It was about one in seven.
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It was about the interval.
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This is held by the Westminster Confession of Faith.
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Presbyterians hold this view.
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It's also held in the 1689 London Baptist Confession of Faith.
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So, it is held by those who would consider themselves to be Reformed Baptists.
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That is Sunday Sabbatarianism.
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It's also in the early documents of the Southern Baptist Convention.
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One of the earliest documents is the Abstract of Principles.
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And, the Abstract of Principles talks about Sunday as a day to cease from all labor, which again is Sabbath don't work.
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That's what Sabbath take a rest.
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So, this view was popularized in the Reformation and again held by many Reformed Churches, which would make people think, well, that must be my view.
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That must be our view.
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Well, this is where we are a little different because that is not the view that we hold.
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We don't hold number one and we don't hold number two, though I would give respect to someone who holds that, but I would differ and have my reasons.
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Number three is known as Lord's Day Observers.
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You say, well, aren't number two Lord's Day Observers? There is a distinction.
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Lord's Day Observers would say that Sunday is the Lord's Day, but it's not the Sabbath.
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They would say the Sabbath was for the Jewish people and the Lord's Day is for the Old Covenant.
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By the way, it does tell us in Exodus that the Sabbath was the sign of the Old Covenant.
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Moses was told that the sign of the Covenant is the Sabbath, which is why I believe it is included in the Ten Commandments because that was the covenantal document, handwritten by God.
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And, the fourth commandment is to keep the Sabbath because that is their sign.
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That is the sign of their covenant.
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Our covenant is in Christ and the cross, which happens to bring about the resurrection, so we celebrate the day called the Lord's Day and it is not the same as the Sabbath any more than the Lord's Supper is the same as Passover.
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That is the distinction that you need to put in your mind.
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The Old Testament has been given to the New Testament.
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The Old Testament had its signs and its ceremonies and the New Testament has its signs and its ceremonies and the Old Testament sign of the Passover has gone away and now we have the Lord's Supper.
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We don't take Passover every week, we take the Lord's Supper every week.
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In the same way we don't have the Sabbath, we have the Lord's Day.
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You say, well, what's the difference? Not much.
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We still gather for worship, we still do things, but the restrictions that were laid upon the Sabbath, we would argue, are not applied to the Lord's Day.
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So that would be the biggest distinction, but they are still both very similar but not exactly the same.
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The final view is the fulfillment view and that is that Christ came to fulfill the law of Moses and in particular he fulfills the law of the Lord's Day.
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He fulfills the demand to do.
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Christ has done what we could not do and therefore our responsibility is not to do, do, do, but to rest in him.
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He says, come to me all ye who labor and are heavy laden and I will give you Sabbath.
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I will give you rest.
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So what the fulfillment view says is that Christ himself is the Sabbath.
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Now, if you want a few verses for that, because that is where I land, I would take you to Hebrews chapter 4, which we are going to read in a moment, but also in a couple of weeks in Colossians chapter 2, I am going to preach this very thing, because in Colossians 2 Paul tells his hearers, do not let any man judge you in regard to a new moon or a festival or a Sabbath, for these things are a shadow of that which is to come and the substance is Christ.
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Paul says very specifically, the shadow was the Sabbath, but the substance is Christ.
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That is an important distinction when we talk about the fulfillment view.
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So if somebody did ask and say, where do you stand? I would say, I am here.
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I do believe Sunday is the Lord's Day.
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I do believe it is the time that we gather to celebrate the resurrection.
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I believe every Sunday is Easter.
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We have one day a year that we celebrate resurrection day, but no, we have 52 Sundays, because we celebrate Easter, we celebrate resurrection 52 times a year, and it is on Sunday.
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But, I believe the Sabbath is fulfilled not in this, but in Christ.
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And like I said, I want you to read with me now.
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I know we are a little bit over time, but I am only going to keep you for one or two more minutes.
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Go with me to Hebrews chapter 4.
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It says in verse 1, Therefore, while the promise of entering his rest still stands, let us fear lest any of you should seem to have failed to reach it.
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For good news came to us just as to them, but the message they heard did not benefit them, because they were not united by faith with those who listened.
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For we who have believed enter that rest.
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As he said, As I swore in my wrath, they shall not enter my rest, although his works were finished from the foundation of the world.
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For he has somewhere spoken of the seventh day in this way, and God rested on the seventh day from all his works.
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And again in this passage he said, They shall not enter my rest, since therefore it remains for some to enter it, and those who formerly received the good news failed to enter because of disobedience.
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Again he appoints a day today, saying through David so long afterwards in the words already quoted, Today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts.
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For if Joshua had given them rest, God would not spoken of another day later on.
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So then there remains a Sabbath rest for the people of God.
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For whoever has entered God's rest has also rested from his works as God did from his.
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Notice the rest there is not a day, it's a state of being.
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You're entering into rest.
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You're not celebrating a day or going to a day or doing something on a day.
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You're entering into a state of rest.
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And what is that state of rest? It's trusting in Christ.
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That's what I think this is telling us.
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We have a state of rest that we enter into when we trust in the Lord Jesus Christ.
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Now a lot of people look at verse 9 and they say, Well right here it says there remains a Sabbath rest for the people of God.
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That proves that Sabbath still exists.
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I say well you got to keep reading.
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Because verse 10 says, For whoever has entered God's rest has also rested from his works as God did from his.
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It's not a day, it's a state of being.
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It's not a day.
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It's Christ.
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So that is my argument.
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Again, I'm not saying you have to hold that position.
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I'm saying that's my position.
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And as the old man said, I'm sticking to it.
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I think this is helpful for us to discuss.
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Because when it comes to this question, I do think there's place for Christians to have disagreement and even have differing convictions.
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So long as we are not forcing those convictions on others or demanding others to obey what we are convicted by, I think that we'll be fine as a body.
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But this is always helpful for you to understand why we hold the positions we hold and where we're at on these issues.
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Does anyone have a question? Yes, sir, Rocco.
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He's not here tonight.
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His daughter is getting married Saturday.
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So I'm guessing he's busy.
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But I'll let him know you asked.
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Anyone else? Yes, sir? So would you see, you would see like the command to worship, you would see that coming from like neglect, not the gathering together of believers? Is that otherwise I'm just looking at this.
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So like, you know, creation, you know, the creation week and stuff like that, the seven day week and all sort of thing.
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Just the idea of there being a day that is a day of worship.
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That does come from, you know, Christ's resurrection, Lord's Day.
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Yeah.
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And I think I can make a pretty good argument that we should gather at least once a week and that we should gather for worship on the Lord's Day.
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I like I said, that's why I hold the three and four.
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But where my where my what often happens is you get either people hold three and four, which is me, or you get people hold two and three, which is my 1689 brethren, because they're saying the Lord's Day is the Sabbath.
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I'm saying the Lord's Day is not the Sabbath.
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The Sabbath is filled in Christ.
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But we still both hold the same day.
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And what's funny about that is when Rob and I were debating, and if you go back and listen to a three hour debate about halfway through, we both said we both do the same thing.
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We both come to church.
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We both worship.
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We both gather with the people of God.
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We both do the same thing.
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The question for me has always been the question of what am I doing? Am I fulfilling a law of the Sabbath? And I don't think that I am.
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I think that in the new covenant, I'm celebrating the resurrection.
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And they would agree with that.
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They would just say they would add to it that we're also fulfilling the law.
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And I just don't think that that's necessary to believe.
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So that's the so the distinctions are minor.
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But they are there.
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And like I said, I don't think I wouldn't like it wouldn't keep me from going to a church like that.
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If I if I if I were if I were living in another state, and I had to find a church and they were a Sabbatarian church wouldn't keep me from going to that church any more than I think a lot of folks would come here if they held that, you know, because because a lot of practical things are the same.
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Any question? A lot to think about, huh? I'm sorry, I sort of shifted gears in the middle.
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But I want y'all to understand Jesus is being accused of breaking the Sabbath here.
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And I think we need to understand on our side what the Sabbath is and how we understand it.
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That's why I wanted to make that part of tonight's lesson.
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So I hope y'all found that helpful.
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Let's, let's end with a word of prayer.
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Father, I thank you for your word.
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Pray, Lord, now that you would apply this teaching of the word to our heart, Lord, where it has been accurate and true.
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And Lord, if I have failed or, or misled or misunderstood, Lord, I pray that you would take that from us.
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And, and Lord, that you'd forgive me my sins.
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And I pray God that through all this, you would be glorified in Jesus name.
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Amen.