The Sabbath

DEVOTION

THE GOSPEL OF LUKE

THE SABBATH

Luke 14:1-6

14:1 One Sabbath, when Jesus went to eat in the house of a prominent Pharisee, he was being carefully watched. 2 There in front of him was a man suffering from dropsy. 3 Jesus asked the Pharisees and experts in the law, "Is it lawful to heal on the Sabbath or not?"  4 But they remained silent. So taking hold of the man, he healed him and sent him away. 5 Then he asked them, "If one of you has a son or an ox that falls into a well on the Sabbath day, will you not immediately pull him out?"  6 And they had nothing to say.

NIV

Jesus poses a question which these Pharisees and experts in the law could not answer in the affirmative without condemning themselves. They were so steeped in the law, in rules and regulations they could not see the compassion of God at work. They made such a regulation out of the Sabbath. Although it is true God has commanded six days shall you labor and the seventh rest, it seemed this men made more of the Sabbath then God did. What can our lesson be here? Is it only about the Sabbath and what we can and cannot do on it? Surely it would be right to exercise compassion on those in need on the Sabbath. How do we celebrate the Sabbath? Does our one hour at church fulfill that requirement? If we are so concerned about the Sabbath because of the command of God, what about the rest of that command? What about working the other six days? Did those Pharisees and experts of the law work six full days? What kind of work did they do? Did they ever retire from their work? What about what God told Adam about working the ground all the days of his life? It seems men decide which commands of God they what to elaborate on and which they choose to absolutely ignore. Is that what we do? Jesus healed people all six days and also on the seventh. He demonstrated there should be no rest from doing acts of compassion, which is the will of the Father. Do we stopped loving our neighbor as our self on the Sabbath, if he has a need that would require us to do some work? What about our own oxen? Jesus knew they surely would save their own oxen on the Sabbath and so did they. Again, man makes his own rules about the Sabbath which are not what God intended. The point is that we should work for six days and rest one. God did not establish one specific day of the week that rest day should be, man did. If man is so concerned about which day the Sabbath is, and that we should go to church on that day to fulfill the command of God then we all should also be working all the days of our lives the rest of the six days. But that is just not the case, at least in this society. We pay way too much attention to the rules of man, and not as much to the commands of God then we should. So what should we do? It would seem the answer is to live by the will of God rather than the will of man. It is easier is live by the rules of man than of God. We can change the rules to fit our liking whenever it suits our fancy. We can even adapt them or interpret them the way we desire them to work to our best interest. But we God, we simply have no choice, his ways are not our ways. His ways are the only way we should live. We need to forsake the will of man, and strictly adhere to the will of God. It is right to always show compassion on others no matter what day of the week it is. It is always right to heal someone, to help someone, to demonstrate the love of God to someone, no matter what day it is. The Sabbath is simple that one day a week we set aside from our six days of labor to rest. We somehow think that is the day we should honor God by going to church, but we should be honoring God all seven days of the week, in fact all the days of our life. The Sabbath is simply a day of rest from our labor.