Sermon Cloud

Due to meeting at Veterans Park for worship on Sunday, we weren't able to record Pastor Donnie's sermon.  But the following is a manuscript of the message, which is fairly close to what Donnie preached that day.

            It's great to have a day off, isn't it?  Who does not get tomorrow off?  I'm sorry.  Let me tell you about some other poor suckers that we have to feel sorry for.  It was the Hebrew people, thousands of years ago.  They didn't get Memorial Day off work, in fact they NEVER got any time off of work.  They worked 7 days a week.  And it wasn't easy work.  They were making bricks and building buildings.  And to just as icing on the cake, they didn't get paid either.  They were slaves.  I know some of you feel like you work like slaves at times.  There are stats that back that up.  Americans work more than anyone else in the world.  Make more money than anyone else in the world.  And have more debt to anyone else in the world.  We're working long hours, to pay for stuff we don't need, to impress people we don't like.  So maybe we really can relate to the slavery of the Hebrew people.

            Well the story goes that God rescued them from slavery in Egypt and in the process of leading them to the promised land, he gave them instructions on how he wants them to live.  We call these the Ten Commandments.  Listen to the 4^th commandment, Exodus 20:8-11.  They still had to work for a living, but God was commanding them to STOP once a week.  Which is what a Sabbath is, it's a ‘stop day.'  I love the fact that God's so thorough here that he even commands the animals to rest.  God knows our tendency is toward workaholism.  So he kicks us in the butt with this command to "Sabbath."  This commandment shows how much God loves us. 

            With that in mind, we fast-forward a couple millennia to the ancestors of the Hebrew slaves, the Jewish people.  They've now developed all these man-made rules about how you're supposed to keep the Sabbath.  They had a list of 39 prohibited activities.  They were some extreme groups who even said that if you had to choose between violating the Sabbath to save a life or letting the person die, you'd let them die.  A friend of mine had some Jewish roommates in college and they weren't allowed to use any type of power switch on the Sabbath.  So, they couldn't even change the channel.  So they'd have their roommates turn the TV onto ESPN for a Saturday of watching football and they wouldn't have to change the channel.  But one roommate liked to change the TV to HG TV and then leave for the day, just to make them mad.  I'd say some of these rules are missing the point of Sabbath.  In Jesus' day, it was a serious crime to break Sabbath.

            Matthew 12:1-14  I'm starting a series called "Jesus Vs. the Religious Right" and I'll be talking about often religious people can point to some verse and prove that what they're doing is ‘biblical' but they're often missing the point of the bible's teaching.  And that's exactly what's going on here.  The religious leaders are in Jesus' face, "we're following the Bible" but Jesus tells them they're completely missing the point of the Bible's teachings.  God didn't give us the instruction to Sabbath so there would be one more rule we had to follow.  He gave us the rule of Sabbath to protect us from burnout and to make life more enjoyable. 

            While it honors God to not spend the whole day in the fields harvesting grain on the Sabbath, you've got 6 other days to do that, it's missing the point to get on Jesus' followers for grabbing some food.  It's the difference between taking a five hour trip to the grocery store or making a sandwich.  They were hungry, so they grabbed some food.  The religious leaders were lifting the rule of Sabbath above the actual needs of Jesus' disciples.  And it really made Jesus mad.

            But Jesus got even angrier during the second incident.  The religious leaders got on Jesus for healing a man's deformed hand on the Sabbath.  To the religious leaders, this was a big ‘no-no.'  They had a law against healing on the Sabbath.  These religious leaders would rather a person stay wounded, or hungry, than to break their Sabbath rules.  Jesus was so angry because they were putting rules above people.  Conformity to a rule was a higher value to the religious people than actually helping another human being.  Jesus tells them, "you're missing the point."  Sabbath was given to free people from the oppression of constant work and these religious leaders were using Sabbath to create another form of oppression.  If you want to make Jesus mad, put rules above hurting people. 

            I love what Jesus says in vs. 7-8.  I think you could reframe Jesus' words in this way.  You're going against the very heart of God if your rules ever keep people from experiencing mercy or push them away from Jesus.  If we follow rules simply for the sake of keeping the rule, rather than coming into a closer relationship with the God who gave us those rules, then we're completely missing the point.  It's the sin of idolatry; worshipping something other than God. 

            God's directions for our lives are so we become more human, not less human.  Feeding a hungry person helps both people become more human.  The same is true of healing.  Had Jesus told the man with the lame hand, "keeping this rule is more important than your healing" it would've dehumanized that person.  And to ignore a needy person simply for the sake of keeping our own rules is just plain sick. 

            And yet we've done it.  And we need to confess it to God and each other.  Which is going to make this next series difficult for me to preach.  My personality is that of a rule-keeper.  There are certain things you do because they need to be done.  In itself that isn't bad.  But when you start to lift those life expectations above the person they're intended to help, you're dehumanizing them and yourself. 

            Yes, there are certain ways God wants us to live, for our own sake.  But do we communicate those expectations in ways that are life-giving or life-taking?  And how we treat people who don't live the same way we live?  Can we value relationships above rules?

            There's one more point I want to make.  Although Jesus got on the religious leaders for putting the rule above a person, we know that Jesus and his early followers still practiced Sabbath.  They still stopped doing once a week so they could rest.  We're to do the same thing.

            Sabbath helps us realize that we are human beings rather than just human doings.  Since it's my role to teach scripture, I want to challenge you to regularly practice Sabbath.  To unplug from the rat race and just be.  To realize your worth comes not in what you get accomplished but in who you are as God's child.  Again, this one is hard for me, too.  Let's do this together.  And a great time to start is right now, as spend the day resting and hanging out together. 

            Pastor Andy's going to come lead us in communion.