Sermon.
There seem to be a surprising number of strange laws around in the USA
Revd Brian Bill in his sermon Law or Legalism lists a number of these He writes
"Almost every state has surprising laws on their books.
• In Florida, a woman may be fined for falling asleep under a hair dryer.
• In Indiana, citizens are not allowed to attend a movie within four hours after eating garlic. That seems like a good law to me.
• In Iowa, a man with a moustache is forbidden from kissing a woman in public.
• In Moline, ice-skating at the Riverside pond during the months of June and August is strictly prohibited.
• In Normal, Illinois, it’s against the law to make a face at a dog.
• In Wisconsin, it’s against the law to serve apple pie in restaurants unless there is cheese on top of it.
And, it’s probably a good thing that I’m not a pastor in Nicholas County, West Virginia because no member of the clergy is allowed to tell jokes or humorous stories from the pulpit.
We may laugh, or groan, at these out-of-date laws, because many of them seem absurd and ridiculous.
But, if we were to list all the rules, expectations, and laws that are on the books in some churches today, chances are we’d stop laughing pretty quickly.
Most of these religious regulations are not written down but some of us attempt to keep them, or expect others to do so.
(Liberty or legalism by Brian Bill https://www.sermoncentral.com/sermons/liberty-or-legalism-brian-bill-sermon-on-legalism-vs-grace-198343?ref=SermonSerps)
But the law of the Sabbath was NOT one of those daft laws we come across.
The fourth commandment says :
8 “Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy. 9 Six days you shall labour, and do all your work, 10 but the seventh day is a Sabbath to the LORD your God. On it you shall not do any work, you, or your son, or your daughter, your male servant, or your female servant, or your livestock, or the sojourner who is within your gates. 11 For in six days the LORD made heaven and 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. 8 “Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy. 9 Six days you shall labour, and do all your work, 10 but the seventh day is a Sabbath to the LORD your God. On it you shall not do any work, you, or your son, or your daughter, your male servant, or your female servant, or your livestock, or the sojourner who is within your gates. 11 For in six days the LORD made heaven and 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. (Ex 20:8-11)
The Sabbath Commandment comes very high up on the list of the Ten Commandments – in fact immediately after the commandments to do with the Lord our God directly.
So we have to take the Sabbath Commandment very seriously.
But let’s start with what the 4th Commandment does NOT say:
1. It doesn’t say the Sabbath has to be a Sunday. Indeed in Old Testament times the Jewish Sabbath started on Friday evening and went on till Saturday evening.
Christians changed it to a Sunday in deference to Christ being raised from the dead on a Sunday
There are some people who have to work on Sunday and so they have to take another day as their Sabbath.
2. It doesn’t say the Sabbath is only an hour on Sunday devoted to God and then we can do what we like.
One churchwarden said to me once: You mustn’t go over an hour for the service as people have to go home to cook the lunch at 12 noon.
I was tempted to ask him if he had ever come across a slow cooker!!
3. So not to transgress the Law of the Sabbath the Jews determined that you could not walk over a certain distance on the Sabbath for fear of breaking the Sabbath.
The Sabbath’s day’s walk is only referred to in Acts 1:12 and it is the distance between the Mount of Olives and Jerusalem .
That has been calculated to be about a kilometre.
Which is a reason that religious Jews try to live within a kilometre of the Synagogue
Brian Bill put the matter very well when he said
“Did you know that at the time of Jesus, Jewish leaders had established 39 Sabbath clarifications, with each having multiple subdivisions, making for over 1500 prohibitions?
Here are some of them.
• It was unlawful to kill a flea that lands on your arm because that would make you guilty of hunting on the Sabbath.
• If a man’s ox fell into the ditch, he could pull it out but if a man fell in, he had to stay there.
• You could dip your radish in salt but if you left it there too long you were pickling it, and thus working. The Pharisees actually had discussions on how long it took to pickle a radish.
• You could only eat an egg that had been laid on the Sabbath if you killed the chicken for working on the Sabbath.
• It was OK to spit on a rock on the Sabbath, but you couldn’t spit on the ground, because that made mud, and mud was mortar, and that was work.”
(Liberty or legalism by Brian Bill https://www.sermoncentral.com/sermons/liberty-or-legalism-brian-bill-sermon-on-legalism-vs-grace-198343?ref=SermonSerps)
In Judaism the Sabbath was chocked up with legalism.
Story: When Maddy was working for a Jewish family. Once when the Sabbath had just started they called down to her in the stairwell to come back up to their third floor apartment in Basle because they had forgotten to put a light on.
Why? Because switching the light on is considered work and against the Sabbath.
But I have been talking about the negatives.
There are three types of Old Testament
1. The Ceremonial Law
2. The Law of the Country of Israel and
3. The Moral Law of God summed up in the Ten Commandments
Only the Moral Law is applicable to Christians today.
The Ceremonial Law was a prefiguring of Christ’s death on the Cross and so is no longer relevant
The Law of the Land of Israel - for example the cities of refuge - is only applicable if you live in Israel.
But God’s Moral Law has not changed.
We keep God’s Moral Law because we love Him. Our salvation has been procured by Christ’s death upon the Cross and not by anything we could do.
We try to obey God’s Law because we love Him and in thankfulness for our salvation.
So how should we observe the Sabbath?
1. We should note firstly that the Sabbath is a time to be off work.
The Medical Profession have realised that unless you have a day off from work in the week you will
damage your health. For example it reduces stress, it reduces heart disease, it boosts your immune system
and it restores your mental energy and creativity.
(https://www.inc.com/rhett-power/a-day-of-rest-12-scientific-reasons-it-works.html)
2. Secondly that Sabbath should be devoted to God
For ourselves, it should be a time where we take time to be alone with God, in prayer and study as well as taking time to enjoy creation, away from work
3. The Sabbath is a time where we can do good for others
The only charge the Pharisees ever brought against Jesus Himself with regard to the Sabbath was healing on the Sabbath.
And by healing on the Sabbath Jesus was telling us that it is right to do good on the Sabbath.
We can see that as justification for the medical profession or the fire service to work on the Sabbath.
But it is important that they have another day as the Sabbath.
In conclusion the Sabbath is there for mankind to recuperate from his or her work during the week and to spend precious time with God, as indeed we are doing this morning in our Service.
