Often, in Christian circles when you bring up the word or concept of “Sabbath”, they think of a legalistic keep-the-Saturday-free-of-anything-fun type of Sabbath observance. Sabbath-keeping is seen as something religious, even legalistic. And then when you look at Jesus’ ministry, he also seems to address the legalism of the Sabbath observance by religious Jews in his day.
But was Jesus really so opposed to the Sabbath? Or are we misinterpreting his words? A couple of weeks ago, as a part of our teaching series in the Gospel of Luke, I explored what Jesus said about the Sabbath, and what this means for us as non-Jews who follow Jesus in our day and age.
Here is the video of that message:
These were the principles I gleaned from Jesus’ approach to the Sabbath, in light of the Sabbath commands of the Hebrew Bible and the bare fact that for us gentiles often different commands apply:
- Stay away from legalistic observance of the sabbath.
- Carve out a day of rest in your weekly calendar. If God rested on the seventh day, you need to rest every seventh day. But remember: for us non-Jews it’s not so much about which day of the week we rest on, but the fact that we rest one day per week. Don’t feel guilty about resting on Sunday or another day of the week!
- Prioritize your family and your church family at least one day every week.
- Remember that Jesus is your ultimate sabbath rest. Focus your life on him to experience rest and wholeness. A day of rest every week is only a shadow of the perfect that is to come!
Leave a Reply