Bible Text: Luke 14:1-11 | Preacher: Pastor Christian Preus
Sabbath means rest. God created the world and all that there is in six days and on the seventh He rested from His labors. He wasn’t tired from all the work. “He who keeps Israel neither slumbers nor sleeps.” It wasn’t hard for Him. He didn’t need “rest” in that sense. The first Sabbath, God resting, means two things. First, that He was done creating. Second, that He is never done with His creation.
First, He rested means He stopped making stuff. He was done, everything He wanted to make He made and it was good. He crowned His creation with man and woman, and it was very good. This is the foundation of all scientific discovery, all knowledge about this world and universe and how it works. That God stopped creating, He rested. Because it means everything is set, everything is stable, the laws of the universe are permanent, gravity, the speed of light, everything. “The earth is the Lord’s, and the fulness thereof; the world, and they that dwell therein. For he hath founded it upon the seas, and established it upon the waters.”
Our modern atheists are now denying this very point – that creation stopped. They’ve come up with a sci-fi theory that universes are popping up constantly, infinitely, and ours is only one of many in a multiverse. The theory is based on absolutely nothing. It just illustrates the Psalm’s decree, “The fool has said in his heart there is no god.” If things pop up out of nowhere then there’s no reason why an elephant doesn’t pop up in your living room or a roast beef on your table. Poof. The reason that doesn’t happen and you know it won’t is because God stopped creating, and the laws He set then are set now. It’s because Christians knew this that science came about, all the discoveries of the modern world. God’s resting on the seventh day was God’s invitation to men to come and examine it all, to have dominion, to see how birds fly and so how a plane can fly too, how electricity travels and so can be harnessed and captured and made to light up our houses. That’s why science and all these great discoveries came about in the Christian world. It didn’t happen among the Aztecs who, when Cortez found them, were still sacrificing humans to their false gods so that rain would fall down. It didn’t happen anywhere else either. It happened where people knew that God rested on the seventh day and so all the laws of creation were settled and wouldn’t change.
Second, God resting also means that He is never done with His creation. He cares for it constantly. He finds His rest among us and we find our rest in Him. This is the whole point of creation. God wants to be with us. When I rest I spend time with those I love. When God rests He spends His time with us. So in Genesis you see Him walking in the garden with Adam and Eve. He spoke with them, taught them, provided for them. He does the same with us. He cares for us, talks with us, and it gives Him rest, pleasure, because He made us in His image and He loves us.
This is what you see with Jesus on the Sabbath, as the Pharisees watch Him intently. Is He going to heal the man with dropsy or not? Well of course He is. Jesus does what God does, what the Sabbath is all about. This is how He rests. He restores His creation, heals this man, and then He teaches everyone there about love and pride and humility. He isn’t breaking the Sabbath. He’s fulfilling it.
Christ didn’t break anything. He doesn’t destroy, He is Creator, He builds up. The only thing He destroys is sin, death, and the devil, the very things that are destroying us. He says so. He says, “I have not come to abolish the Law,” but what? “To fulfill it.”
You see him fulfilling the Sabbath here. And what He did then He does now. The Sabbath is not about obeying rules. The only reason God set down rules with Moses – on that day you shall do no work, neither you nor your family within your house – the only reason was to make His people remember their Creator, that He still speaks to them and teaches them and cares for them. That’s why only this commandment has that word “Remember.” Remember what? Remember that God made you. Remember that He made you for Himself, and your soul is restless until it finds its rest in Him. So He says Remember, and Jesus is only repeating this Remember, when He says, Do this in remembrance of Me. Remember that I have engraved you on My hands, Remember that I who created you would not let the devil and all your sin take you from Me, Remember that this body bore your death and this blood washed away your sin, Remember that you are mine. I have bought you back from hell, and I have pledged Myself to you and you to Me forever.
The Law of Moses showed that rules couldn’t make a single person trust in God. The rules forced people to obey outwardly. The man who went out to collect sticks on the Sabbath got stoned to death. You’d better obey. But rules don’t rule our hearts, they only rule our actions. I can force my children to go to church with a rule, but I can’t force them to remember the Sabbath day. Not even God can do that. And He doesn’t want to. Jesus says, “The hour is coming, and now is, when the true worshippers shall worship the Father in spirit and in truth: for the Father seeks such to worship him.”
You don’t go to church because of a rule. There is no rule, not in the sense of some legal requirement. Jesus has fulfilled the Sabbath. Sabbath, Rest, is found in Him. You come because you want to. Because you are weary and heavy laden and Jesus has promised you rest. Because the law you cannot fulfil accuses you, but the One who fulfilled it blesses you. You come because you remember your sin and worry and sorrow and pain and fear of death and hell and He is your rest from it all. He is the Sabbath of God. He is the reason God delights in you. He’s the reason God found delight in Adam and Eve on that first Sabbath too. He is God’s rest in us and our rest in God.
So look at the Pharisees and look at the dropsied man. They are both at church. Jesus is there teaching with people assembled together, that’s church, that’s the definition of church. The Pharisees are there only because they are obeying rules. How’s that going for them? They sit in judgment of God! They lack any love for the dropsied man – he is a prop, a tool, for them. They are full of pride, take the best seats, judge one another. Everything that God created life for, where Sabbath, Rest, is found, faith in Him, love for one another, they don’t have, because they don’t remember the Sabbath day, they remember only rules. If that is church, I don’t want it. Rules are for children. “When I was a child I spoke like a child, I reasoned like a child, I thought like a child, but when I became a man, I put off childish ways.”
But the dropsied man wants to be there. He is the picture of the Christian. No rule brought him there. Jesus did. And the man doesn’t even have to ask anything from Jesus. Jesus gives before he’s asked. This is the beautiful pattern. You saw it last week. No one asked Jesus to raise the widow’s son. He did it because He is life and He gives life. It is who He is. He’s the Sun of Righteousness, and the Sun doesn’t stop shining no matter how we object. He is the tree of life and that tree cannot not bear good fruit. No one asked Jesus to heal that man. He does it moved by the love with which He made us in the first place, the very love He wants us to remember by giving us this beautiful commandment, “Remember the Sabbath Day.”
We remember because He first remembers us.
Jesus tells them all, “What one of you, if his son or his ox falls into a pit on the Sabbath, will not immediately pull him out?” He appeals to a love that He Himself planted in our nature when He created us, to reflect what He is, what He does, that we love our own, what has come from our own body, what belongs to us. Because this is what He is doing. That’s the point. This is what He does. We are His children, we came from Him, and we are His, He bought us with His blood, so He is the father who comes and rescues the son and He is the owner who comes and rescues the ox from the well. He comes on the Sabbath and rescues us from the pit of sin and death.
It’s amazing that Jesus is sitting there being judged, with all these people gathered around Him for the wrong reasons, and Jesus isn’t fazed at all. He teaches them. They didn’t come to be taught by Him. He does it anyway. Takes total control. He still does this. It doesn’t matter if you came here today for all the right reasons, or simply out of habit, or because of some rule you thought you were obeying, or if you’ve been judging others, or if you’ve been angry with God, Jesus is going to teach you, because He loves you and wants to give you rest.
He could not have had a more hostile audience with those Pharisees, but He teaches them the truth that will save them.. He tells them to put away their pride, to take the lowest seat, because they stand now not simply in front of men with whom they can contend, but with the God who made them, knows their sin, knows they deserve the lowest seat. And He wants to lift them up. You can compete in the world for recognition, for pride of place, for people to recognize you for your accomplishments, your title, your due, and that will give you no satisfaction, because even if you win it all it is only vapor. But here, in Christ’s Kingdom, before Jesus, the lowest seat is the best seat. Jesus looks on the dropsied man, on the leper, on the sinner, and gives him rest.
He who exalts himself will be humbled and he who humbles himself will be exalted. This first describes Jesus. Jesus is Lord. He is the exalted One. He is the One before whom every knee will bow in heaven and on earth and below the earth. But only first because the Word became flesh, became one of us, debased himself, humbled himself, gave himself over to our death and bore our sin. Therefore God has highly exalted him, and given Him the name that is above every name. It is our great glory to be called by the name of Christ, to be Christians, and that name belongs to the humble. Only sinners are made saints, and only the weak are made strong. So take the lowest seat. Christ will tell you to move up higher. He takes sinners who want their Sabbath, their Rest, in Him, and He calls you friend and feeds you at His table with His own life, and fulfills His Sabbath and yours now and forever. Amen.