Do you Rest in Jesus?

There’s a fascinating story in Mark 2:23-28 where Jesus and his disciples are walking through a field on the sabbath, and Jesus’ disciples begin picking heads of grain.

However, the Pharisees, a massively influential political and religious pressure group during the period, saw what was happening and stepped in.

They approached Jesus, and the following ensued:

(2:24) “Look, why are they doing what is not lawful on the sabbath?” (2:25) And he [Jesus] said to them, “Have you never read what David did when he and his companions were hungry and in need of food? (2:26) He entered the house of God, when Abiathar was high priest, and ate the bread of the Presence, which it is not lawful for any but the priests to eat, and he gave some to his companions.” (2:27) Then he said to them, “The sabbath was made for humankind, and not humankind for the sabbath; (2:28) so that Son of Man is Lord even of the sabbath.”

This little story is somewhat tricky. Is Jesus arbitrarily breaking the sabbath, one of the most central commandments of the Old Testament (Gen. 1-2; Ex. 20; and Deut. 5)? Or is there a deeper and richer meaning here?

In defense of these actions, Jesus appeals to the example of King David. But, this example doesn’t actually carry much force, UNLESS Jesus is somehow associating himself with the coming Davidic king!

Then comes, perhaps, the most shocking element in the story:

Jesus says, effectively, “It’s not so much that we were designed to keep the sabbath as the sabbath was designed to keep us.” The sabbath was instituted, Jesus contends, to provide a particular rhythm to life in which human beings, at “rest” (Hebrew: shabbat; English: sabbath), will have a deep sense of the presence of God.

And then the punch line: “so the Son of Man is Lord even of the sabbath.”

But what does Jesus mean?

Jesus’ challenge to the Pharisees goes something like this:

“You have forgotten that the sabbath was instituted, as the prophets repeatedly say, not as a permanent regulation but as a temporary measure whereby human beings get one day of ‘rest,’ but this partial rest was always designed to point forward to a much richer and all-embracing ‘rest,’ when the Messiah/Son of Man would come as ‘Rest-in-Person’.”

Simply put, Jesus is saying that anyone following Him is keeping the sabbath, because they have entered into that much truer and richer rest, and those not following Him, regardless of how seriously they take the partial rest of one day a week, are not keeping sabbath.

We would love for you to come and join us at Ooltewah United Methodist Church as we learn day by day and week by week how to enter this rest which Jesus has for each one of us!