Sabbath Controversy #2: Observations / Applications

In this part of the sermon: Pastor Martin introduces the sermon as the second in a series on the Sabbath controversy, focusing on Mark 2:23-28. He reviews the previous week's exposition, covering the…

A congregation member recalled doing exactly what the disciples did – picking grain, rubbing it, blowing chaff, and eating it as a snack – illustrating the naturalness and innocence of the disciples' actions.

namely simply to open up and underscore and isolate, the basic facts established by the passage and to explain the meaning of the words of the passage. And this morning I will briefly review the highlights of that exposition, and then we will move on to consider together some vital observations and applications of the truth contained in the passage. In our study last Lord's Day, we noted in verse 23, this simple account of the activity of Jesus and his disciples. He, with them, was going through a field of standing grain on a Jewish Sabbath day. And as they went through that field of standing ...

1:28 - 2:48 Read in full sermon

Driving home: The Sabbath was made, or literally came into being for the sake of, or on the behalf of, man. The diah with the accusative means nothing less than for the sake of, or on account of. The Sabbath came into being for the sa…

The Pharisees' view of the Sabbath is likened to a system of rules into which every man must be squeezed, as if man were created only to keep Sabbath rules, highlighting their backward thinking.

You Pharisees don't understand the original intention and purpose of the appointed day of rest. You view the appointed day of rest with God's stipulations to which you've added 1500 plus of your own, and that's literally, they had 39 times 39, all of these stipulations, and you view it as a system of rules and regulations into which every man must be squeezed, as though man were created for nothing more than to keep the rules and regulations of your Sabbath. He said, You're thinking backwards. Man was not made for the Sabbath. Rather, the appointed day of rest was brought into being for man, t...

7:59 - 9:17 Read in full sermon

The point: Be warned from this passage, lest we fall into the same snare of legalism that accused the Son of God of lawlessness.

Martin quotes John Owen, who humorously describes how some attempt to preserve the Sabbath by adding so many man-made rules that 'a man could scarcely in six days read over all the duties that are proposed to be observed on the seventh,' illustrating the burden of legalism.

And you see what happens when people attempt to preserve the sanctity of God's appointed day by legalism they end up undermining that appointed day of rest and turning it into a day of insufferable and oppressive and constricting heaviness. Now the most classic statement I've ever read on that fact comes, it'll surprise you for its source, from John Owen, the great giant of Puritan theologians. And I've read hundreds, probably thousands of pages of John Owen in my life over the past 20 years is when I first became acquainted with Owen. And John Owen seldom, I don't know if ever I found, until ...

24:00 - 25:14 Read in full sermon

The point: Be warned from this passage, lest we fall into the same snare of legalism that accused the Son of God of lawlessness.

An example of legalistic questioning is given: 'Can I take a walk on the Lord's day? How far? How fast may I jog?' This illustrates the mentality that seeks a neat package of regulations, which ultimately negates God's law.

And we need to be warned from this passage, lest we fall into the same snare. As one of my brethren said, People, once they begin to take seriously that the Sabbath was made for man, the appointed day of rest is for man, in all covenants and in all dispensations, man is man, needs a divinely appointed day of rest. When he begins to understand that the fourth commandment is a moral precept, we're to remember God's appointed day. He has blessed it and sanctified it and has sanctified it and has said to us, Now you keep it and preserve it in terms of what I have made it.

27:51 - 28:34 Read in full sermon

The point: O child of God, don't dread the appointed day of rest through ignorance. It was made for you.

The story of Eve in the Garden of Eden is used to illustrate how the devil prejudices minds against God's good stipulations, drawing a parallel to how people are prejudiced against the goodness of the Sabbath.

Who can regard that as a burden but one who is a muckraker, whose eyes are ever downward, who lives and thinks as though there were no realities but his own lust and his own toys. But for a Christian to regard as a burden such a gracious gift, O child of God, don't dread the appointed day of rest through ignorance. It was made for you. And the Lord of the Sabbath has brought to you His gracious gift of His own day on which you can gather with His people in the livingness of His own presence and rejoice in Him and give the whole day to His worship and to your own refreshment spiritually, emotio...

33:29 - 34:50 Read in full sermon

The point: My friend, don't you trifle with God's rights to tell you what to do with the life He has given and the time He apportions to you.

Martin quotes John Owen on the historical correlation between the conscientious observation of the Lord's Day and the promotion of holiness and religion, and how accommodating God's commands to corrupt ways leads to declension, applying it to the contemporary disregard for the Sabbath.

My friend, don't you trifle with God's rights to tell you what to do with the life He has given and the time He apportions to you. And the reason some of you disregard the day is because of the rebellion of your own heart. And the tragedy is that as we see the erosion on every hand of even what we would call a general sensitivity to the law of God, we see it also in this area. And the tragedy is that instead of the church raising up a prophetic voice and standing against such lawlessness, it seeks to accommodate its theology to tell people it's all right to go ahead and act as though God had n...

40:58 - 42:26 Read in full sermon

The point: May God take this very passage and keep us as a people, keep us from undermining the appointed day of rest through legalism of any kind, Pharisaic or Mosaic.

Martin states that every revival in church history has been marked by a renewed regard for the sanctity of the Lord's Day, demonstrating the Holy Spirit's work in writing the fourth commandment on believers' hearts.

Is that your course? Then God says, you'll have that course and you'll have it for eternity. No rest, day nor night. But when God in grace says, God has subdued the proud hearts of rebel sinners and brought them to embrace His Son, it can be demonstrated from church history without, I don't know of any exception, every history of every revival of which I've read, one of the marks of the visitation of the Holy Ghost upon a community of people is not only renewed love for the word and renewed life in worship and renewed zeal in witness and renewed fervor and reality in worship and prayer, but al...

46:58 - 48:26 Read in full sermon