Full Sermon Transcript
WELCOME
Pastor Chris Paavola:
There might be a few people watching online who are actually like that as a real background for them on Memorial Weekend here, everybody, good morning, super good to be with you guys today on this memorial weekend and whatever it is you’re doing today, grilling, camping or swimming or whatever it is you guys are doing to celebrate Memorial Day and remember those who paid the ultimate price for our freedom. Thank you guys for including us in that celebration. Actually, the idea of vacation really underscores what it is we’re talking about today. I get geeked out over words. There’s certain words where I just, I have a nerd kind of quality with there’s words that I love and I love analyzing words and thinking about the etymology of them and studying them. And the word vacation shares the same root word with the word vacate and evacuate.
And you think about the way that we talk about vacation and it totally is the Southwest Airlines want to get away from while for a while we want to get away from it all. It’s this escapism, it’s this leave it all behind mentality and we’re going to go off to some idyllic location, some cruise, some beach somewhere and have a getaway from it all. And we’re going to escape reality. And I dunno if you guys ever experienced this, but every time I come back from an extended vacation anywhere, I get really depressed. The reentry is so hard. You sit there and it is this creeping depression that kicks in, you’re great, and then you wake up the last day and you’re kind of bummed and then you get on the plane and then you start driving home and then it just gets darker and darker and heavier and heavier, like back to life, back to reality, just back to all of the daily demands, all of the responsibilities and family drama that’s waiting for me.
And I’ve been away and I’ve been not thinking about it. I’ve been not seeing those things, but now I remind myself that those things are real and as good as vacations are and as enjoyable as a vacation is, getting away from it all it, it’s wonderful. We all need that. I am not saying we shouldn’t have vacations, but what we really need is to learn and to find the ability to rest in reality, to rest in the middle of that chaos and find that rest in the middle of all of that drama and deadlines and responsibility that we’re trying to escape all the time. And that’s really the heart behind God’s Sabbath solution for us. This idea of time for you to rest, for you to get away from it all. And that’s what we’re going to talk about today because there’s things that we need to do in order to find the rest and repose and the respite that God wants for you on this day.
There’s certain things that we have to do and to make sure that we include on this day called the Sabbath Day. And it’s actually a few concepts and principles that we see in the life of Jesus. And it’s this account we just read. And I fully admit, if you are just looking into this Jesus thing, if you’re just starting this journey and you’re not quite sure if you’re part of team Jesus yet or anything like that, this is a strange account. You got Jesus and his disciples walking down a road and they pick some grain of wheat like they see in the ditch on the side of the road or something, and then some other people are calling him out. And then Jesus responds with this really obscure Old Testament reference, what is going on? And so if we’re going to really get into this account and pull some of the principles out of this account that we see, we have to really unpack this thing called Sabbath and in particular unpack the history and the tension that’s in the scene.
JEWS ON SABBATH
Otherwise, we miss it because Jewish people, Jewish people are very, they took very seriously this law to remember the Sabbath day. They took seriously a lot of commands of God and they took them. But when it came to the Sabbath day, man, something about their culture latched onto this command of the Sabbath day. And they went to the nth degree on this thing. You can kind of see how the progression started. They started going, oh God told us to remember the Sabbath day and keep it holy. So they kept it holy. And then their logic was, oh, God is pleased with me. I just kept the Sabbath day. He’s pleased with me for having kept the Sabbath day. This is good. And they thought, well, I want to be more pleasing to God. I want to really make sure I don’t work today. What is work?
And they started thinking about the word work. I think about the word vacation. They think about the word work and they’re like, wait a minute, that means any work. And so they started thinking about other things that might be considered work, and they stopped doing those too. And they thought, well, maybe this is more pleasing to God. And then they thought, if I am more pleasing to God because I did this observance, I didn’t work, then maybe God is more pleased with me than all those other people who didn’t or who did work and did the work that I didn’t do on the Sabbath day. And so suddenly they started looking with a little bit of classism and hierarchy lens at their fellow man and going, I’m a little bit, God likes me a little bit more. He’s more pleased with me. And then they started adding on, well, if I can add more rules onto this, God will be more pleased with me.
And suddenly this law that was meant for good, they started to weaponize against one another because they started creating these long lists of what could be potentially considered work. And this is not in Jewish scripture, okay? The Torah or what we call the Old Testament, the Jewish scripture. It is what it is. And then they started collecting rabbinical writings, writings of other rabbis called the Talmud, and they started collecting these. And in the Talmud it describes what is and what isn’t work. And this week I started reading the Talmud. I don’t read it normally. I just wanted to do a little bit of r and d for the message. And I was like reading it. And it is 24 chapters long in its helmet, 24 chapters. And these are not succinct little chapters. It’s like long and exhaustive writings. It is like reading war and peace of what could or couldn’t be work.
And all these rabbis have their opinions on it. And is it work to hit your wagon on the Sabbath day? Is it work to light a candle on the Sabbath day? Well, let’s see what the Talmud says. Is it work to turn a doorknob on the Sabbath day and just legalism and legalism and legalism piling on to the point that it becomes suffocating, which is why Jesus is like my yoke is easy, my burden is light and gives a little context to those words. We read a little bit earlier, and I’ve seen this actually in action, my wife and I, we used to live in a city with a Jewish community that was just heavily Jewish community. And you would see Jewish people walking to the synagogue on Saturdays because they can’t drive driving his work. So they would walk to the synagogue and as they’re walking to synagogue, they would have the hats with the curly beard thing and ankle length dresses, the whole thing that if you imagine it, and that’s how they’re observing.
I’m not putting that down, I’m just that they’re observing their holy day. But it was a big brew, haha. With city council, they brought a proposal and flooded the city hall with residents. They brought a proposal to install motion detectors on the crosswalk because it was considered work to push the button on the crosswalk. I’m not kidding. I am not kidding. And it passed. And so they spent thousands of dollars installing motion detectors at the crosswalks in this town. And my kids now were like, wait, you have to press the button. I don’t understand. But yeah, because want to avoid work now you shake your head at this, but just me talking for like three weeks in this series on this idea of rest, you guys have come up to me every week after the service going, well, is that technically work? Not can I go in the garden and plant?
Is that technically work? I’m not calling anyone out, but I’m looking at gardeners right now. Is that technically work or somebody who has the luxury of this? Is it work if I get my pool ready on Sunday and I’m like, I would love to have your problem, but so is it technically work to get my pool ready? And okay, here’s my quick answer to this, okay, to give you is it work or is it not work? Does it fill you or does it drain you? Does it require something of you and you have a little bit of an exhausted feel afterwards? Or do you have a regenerated feel afterwards? Because remember Jesus said as we heard in the reading, the Sabbath was made for you. This is for you. So does it fill you? Does it recreate you? I think that’s the heart behind this.
And he’s Lord of the Sabbath so he can tell us what to do. So that’s the context of this legalism, this suffocating legalism going on in this account. When we hear that Jesus and disciples are walking by field and there’s religious leaders observing them and they pick some grain from the ditch and they eat it and they’re like, rabbi, your disciples just ate. And then Jesus references a bunch of obscure Old Testament stories to kind of give them permission and then he teaches, I’m Lord of the Sabbath and the Sabbath is made for man. Then we get into this next account. So this is all one seamless event. It’s all Sabbath related. And actually three of the four biographies of Jesus, Luke, Matthew, and Mark all record this and they all kind of have little nuances of what they record. But I love the way that, and what Matthew captures from this, so is the first century follower of Jesus.
9 Going on from that place, he went into their synagogue, 10 and a man with a shriveled hand was there. Looking for a reason to bring charges against Jesus, they asked him, “Is it lawful to heal on the Sabbath?”
And he writes about this account in Matthew chapter 12, and we continue reading on verse nine, going on from that place, what’s that place? It’s the ditch where they were eating or the field where they were eating grains of food, grains of wheat. And they had the whole conversation. So going on from there, Jesus went into the synagogue. Now just put a little pin in that because we’re going to come back to that as a point that’s important a little bit later on. But Jesus is going to the synagogue and a man with a shriveled hand was there and looking for a reason to bring charges against Jesus. The Pharisees asked him, is it lawful to heal on the Sabbath? Rabbi, what do you say? And now you know why they want to add to this ever expanding, living document of the Talmud. They want to add another rabbi’s teachings of can you heal on the Sabbath day?
And they want to try to trap him in his words and get him to say something that contradicts the rest of the Talmud or the rest of the teachings of rabbis. There is a teaching in the Talmud about whether or not you can take medicine on the Sabbath day. I’m not kidding. Is that considered work to take medicine? It is by the way, they decided it is if it’s life-threatening. But if it’s just like a cold and you’re just miserable, you got to suffer through it on this because that’s considered work. So, they’re splitting hairs here, right? This is the level that they’ve thought through this. And so they’re going, wait a minute, can we heal on the Sabbath day? No, no one else can heal except Jesus. And so this is a unique question for Jesus. And by the way, if you’re just looking in and trying to understand who Jesus is, notice, notice as a quick aside. They don’t question if he has the power to heal.
What they’re questioning is, is it proper for him to heal on this day? No one questions his power. They questioned where he got his power from, but no one could deny when you read these accounts, no one could deny that this dude was doing what he was doing. And it was remarkable. Really, really interesting point. And it’s actually an interesting way to read the book or read his biographies. Like, man, they never question if these are valid. They’re undeniable miracles that he’s doing fascinating. So is a lawful to heal on the Sabbath. And Mark and his retelling of this account, he says that Jesus got angry like turning over tables in the temple, angry, same word. He got angry and he had disdain for the stubbornness of their hearts. I love that. And he kind of mentions that there’s actually silence in the synagogue and there’s this anger as he looks at them and just with this preposterous question.
So as we read Jesus’ words here, he’s not smiling, just realize he’s an angry Jesus at this moment and he continues with verse 11.
11 He said to them, “If any of you has a sheep and it falls into a pit on the Sabbath, will you not take hold of it and lift it out? 12 How much more valuable is a person than a sheep! Therefore it is lawful to do good on the Sabbath.”
“If any of you as a sheep and it falls into a pit on the Sabbath, will you not take hold of it and take it out?” Now he’s citing their laws, their nuanced description, their added laws where it is, okay, if your livestock is going to die, you can rescue it. He’s like Guys, in your own writing you say that if there is a sheep and falls into a pit on the Sabbath, you could take hold of it and lift it out. Well, “how much more valuable is a person than a sheep?” How much more is this person than livestock?
It’s a bad take guys. Therefore it is lawful to do good on the Sabbath. And then he’s saying it’s lawful to do good rather than evil. It’s lawful to save a life rather than kill it. And so this is my take on this guys do good on the Sabbath. This is a day for you. And if you could do something for your neighbor, it’s good to do on the Sabbath. And then the scene’s not done though. This guy’s standing there he is like, I’m sitting right here. I can hear you guys.
13 Then he said to the man, “Stretch out your hand.” So he stretched it out and it was completely restored, just as sound as the other. 14 But the Pharisees went out and plotted how they might kill Jesus.
And so Jesus in the next verse in verse 13 says, “stretch out your hand. So he stretched it out and it was completely restored just as sound as the other.” But the Pharisees went out their nose bent out of shape. Jesus is a risk to their livelihood and their identity and their way of life. And they can’t stop him from doing miracles. They can’t make him teach something contrary to God’s law. They can’t trap him in his words. The only way to end this thing is to end this guy. And so they plotted how they might kill Jesus.
CONNECTION
It’s a fascinating scene and there’s a few different ways to summarize it. But one of the ways that you can summarize this story when you look at it is that you see, and what we learn about the Sabbath day in particular, we see that the Sabbath is a day of connection. Connection.
CONNECTION WITH GOD
Jesus goes to the synagogue. Why? Because he wants to be with his heavenly Father. He wants to like the others, connect with God the Father. And God wants to connect with his people on this day. It’s a day of connection with God. And in fact, in Luke, he talks about how it was customary for Jesus to go to the synagogue on the Sabbath. It’s a day where he goes to be with God and he does this regularly. He models this and establishes this pattern. So after his resurrection, followers of Jesus begin worshiping on Sunday, and we see in Acts 20, they gather together regularly on Sundays.
CONNECTION WITH GOD’S PEOPLE
We see it in one Corinthians 16. And in Revelation one, the apostle John talks about how this is now the Lord’s day. He calls it this. And when they gather together, it is not just to gather with God, but it’s to gather with one another. I dunno if you knew this, but the word church is actually not in the Bible. It was like when you open it, you’ll see the word church in there, but it’s not the real word that’s a derivative of the word. Our word that we get from a German word called, that’s probably how the Germans would say it, right? Excuse me. But it means gathering house, a building. But the word church that you see in your Bible as a translation of a Greek word cia. And it ain’t a noun. It’s a verb. It’s the verb to gather. So when we say we are going to church, we are going to gather.
We are churching with one another. We are gathering, we are the gathering. And if you’re not with the gathering, you’re not churching. And the apostle Paul later on would call it the body of Christ that when we gather, we gather as the body of Christ. I’m the mouth, you’re the eyes, you’re the hand, you’re the feet, you’re the ear. We’re the body of Christ gathered together. We’re dismembered all week long. We’re like Frankenstein. And then we come together and it’s alive. And we are the, this is so weird, but we are the body of Christ assembled together. We are a living body now together.
YOU CONNECT WITH GOD’S SPIRIT ANYWHERE AND ANYTIME.
The point is connection. You can connect with God’s spirit anywhere at any time. You can connect with God’s spirit anywhere at any time. You can connect with God’s spirit in Cancun and the up at South Haven. You can connect with God there. You can connect with God wherever you are right now watching a hundred percent. But you can only connect with God’s body on his day in his house with his people because we are the body. And wherever we assembled and may have this building burnt down and we assembled somewhere else, God’s house, there it is right there. It’s wherever we are. When you’re in a small group and you connect with people in a small group God’s house, he is present with you in his body. And later on it’s just fitting. Today we celebrate communion. We are going to touch his body. And you can’t do that anywhere else with this people other than here as his body.
HOW TO KEEP THE SABBATH DAY HOLY
REST FROM YOUR WORK
REMEMBER GOD’S WORK OF CREATION
REMEMBER GOD’S WORK OF DELIVERANCE
RETURN TO GOD’S HOUSE
There’s no substitute. You guys remember 2020, right? The four-letter word like 2020 and how miserable that was. And then we would do this livestream church thing and there was no one, we would have empty rooms and we would live stream and we did the best we could. It was exceptional times, exceptional circumstances, all that stuff. But it always felt like you were missing something, right? Like something was missing. What was missing? The body, the actual gathering. We are meant to be together on his day in his house with his people. And when we do, it’s his body. And this is where we begin to see how we can make sure we live out the Sabbath day so that we find rest. Not just when we go away on vacation, but even in our reality. So, there you go. Keeping the Sabbath day, you remember, go ahead, next slide please. You rest from your work. You remember God’s work of creation and remember God’s work of deliverance, how to keep the Sabbath day holy. These are the things we do. We talked about this in week one and in week two, but here in week three, we just got a new item to add to that list. You remember the Sabbath day? And keep it holy when you return to God’s house with God’s people for connection.
And listen, I know, I know there are mornings you wake up and you’d rather listen to past your pillow at St. Mattress, but you are blessed here because it’s only here you touch his body and communion. When you shake hands at the door, when you give hugs, when you sing his praises with each other, you are touching God in his body. And think about any time in scripture when people touched the body, there’s healing, there’s forgiveness.
And you think about, I don’t know what the last six days was, whatever sadness was in your last six days, whatever setback, whatever sorrow, whatever sickness, you come here and you touch him. You are healed in ways that you can’t express in Word. There is a healing that is happening in your soul on this day, in this place with these people with there is a healing that happens. In fact, his name Jesus, one of the names of Jesus that was in his prophecy was Emmanuel God with us. And the story is that he is a God who’s not up on some mountain that we have to vacate reality to go find him. No, he’s a God who comes with us in our reality, in our suffering, in our family drama, in our hardships. And the message that you hear again and again on Sunday morning is you are not alone. God is physically with you.
GRANDPA
And that’s a message we need to hear. My grandpa was a farmer up in northern Minnesota and grew corn and soy and all that kind of stuff. And if you talk to him about a work-life balance, especially during spring planting or fall harvest, he would’ve laughed at you like, give me a break. We’re crazy busy. And in fact, if we would visit him, if we would visit my grandma and grandpa in the fall during harvest, we never saw grandpa. He was just gone out in the fields working. He was just gone. And the only reminder that we had that grandpa was there is if you would hear the occasional sputtering of his tractor as he was going back and forth from the barn or if you looked out in the field and you’d see the silhouette of this red tractor bouncing through the fields. He’s just working. There’s a lot to do. And then we would be reminded that grandpa was here because grandma would take his lunch from the kitchen, walk across the yard out into the field and bring him lunch. As he worked, it was just too busy to even stop to come in to eat, except on Sunday. On Sunday, he would wake up before the sun and go milk the cows about a hundred head a cow.
And then he’d come in the house and get ready for church to go to church. He kind of had to, his wife was the organist and they had one car. But without fail, every Sunday there would be grandpa sitting there and we’d make jokes because he’d be sitting with all the widows while his wife was up in the organ and he’s sitting with all the widows flirting with them. Anyway, but when we visited, we would sit with grandpa and then we’d go home and have lunch together with grandpa, and then we’d go for a walk through the woods with grandpa and he’d be talking about trees and animals. And we played cards with grandpa on Sunday, and I made such an impression on me because one, he believed that God would restore him on this day of rest to make him more productive in the next six days, that the harvest could wait and God would protect the crops from hail or pestilence or whatever it might be.
IMAGINE
So, he believed that and that’s what God’s word promises. But also he believed that there was a value in this and he understood connection with God. But then the whole day was a day of connection that made an impression on me. It is not just connecting with God and God’s people and singing the songs, but it’s a day of connection with the people you love and the people most meaningful to you. So you guys today, okay, you’re doing a great job. You’ve done half of it. You came to God’s house with God’s people. You’re about to touch him in his body and blood and the bread and wine of communion. You’re doing a great job.
But keep this theme of connection the rest of the week, the rest of the day today, today, play baseball with your kids today in the backyard. Okay? You have my permission. Make sure your dad plays baseball with you in the backyard. Spouses. Go for a walk with one another and hold hands. And you can say, well, pastor Chris said we had to hold hands as you go for a walk. Call your mom, call your kids connect. And when you do, something is happening in your soul. You are recovering, you’re resting, but you’re keeping the Sabbath day holy with these essential connections. Amen
PRAYER
Now, each very often around here, we end our time together, or we include in our worship what’s called the Apostles creed. These are a statement of belief, I believe statements, right? And the creed is thousands of years old. And it’s just what does it mean to be followers of Jesus? What’s so interesting is the three sections of the creed, they’re called articles, the first article and the second article and the third article, all deal with what we’ve been talking about in the rest series, starting with resting from our work and remembering God’s work of creation. So, I invite you to say these words with me. I believe in God, the Father almighty, maker of heaven and earth. So. there’s God’s work of creation. And then we get into what God went through for his work of deliverance to deliver us. In the second article.
I believe in Jesus Christ, his only son, our Lord, who was conceived by the Holy Spirit, born of the Virgin Mary, suffered under unconscious. Pilate was crucified, died, and was buried. He descended into hell. The third day he rose again from the dead. He ascended into heaven and now sits at the right hand of God, the Father Almighty. From then he will come to judge the living and the dead. And then we get into the third article, which deals with this connection with one another, gathering with God’s people and God’s house. And we talk about the communion of saints and the Christian Church as we read together. I believe in the Holy Spirit, the Holy Christian Church, the communion of saints, the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the body, and the life everlasting. Amen. And we pray together the prayer our Lord taught us to pray, saying our Father, who arts in heaven, hallowed be thy name, thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. For thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever and ever. Amen.
