Sixteen Sermons on Mark's Gospel
Message Two:
May 4, 2003
by Rev. Stephen C. Magee
Before we begin our consideration of the second chapter of Mark’s gospel, I think it will help us to take a few moments to look at one of the Ten Commandments. The fourth commandment says this:
Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy. Six days you shall labor and do all your work, but the seventh day is the Sabbath of the LORD your God. In it you shall do no work: you, nor your son, nor your daughter, nor your male servant, nor your female servant, nor your cattle, nor your stranger who is within your gates. For in six days the LORD made the heavens and the earth, the sea, and all that is in them, and rested the seventh day. Therefore the LORD blessed the Sabbath day and hallowed it.
The Ten Commandments as a whole tell us about our duties to God and our duty to human beings. The first four focus on our duty to God, so this fourth commandment concludes that group. Another way to think about the first four commandments is that they are a summary of your duty to worship the Lord.
To understand the meaning of the Sabbath rest, you need to know that the idea of Sabbath is not something that began at the time of Moses. As the commandment itself states, Sabbath takes us back to the very beginning of creation. God created the world in six days. Then He entered into the seventh day Himself as the author of rest.
For the Israelites the Sabbath day of rest was to be a reminder that a day of future perfect rest was yet to come. When Jesus came He shined forth that great rest in His words and actions as the Lord of the Sabbath. The New Testament tells us that “there remains a rest for the people of God” (Hebrews 4:9). Even after the resurrection of Christ, there is still some fuller rest that we are expecting to come. There is a final fullness of rest that comes when Christ returns with the fullness of His kingdom. Because we still wait for that perfect final rest, we still celebrate one day in seven as a testimony to that coming future rest. That day is now Sunday, the day of the Lord’s resurrection.
Hebrews four commands us to be diligent to enter into the rest of God that he entered into so long ago at the time of creation. We enter that rest through the perfect works of Jesus Christ. Through Him we have true rest, and true peace with God. We can cease from our false works of righteousness by which we would recommend ourselves to God. We give up on this idea of impressing God enough with our own goodness, and humbly receive the great provision of rest that He has for us in the perfections of Jesus Christ.
If you have faith in Jesus Christ as a part of his body, the church, you have this rest in Him. Today is Sunday, the first day of the week, our day of rest and worship as we look forward to the perfect rest that Christ has promised and secured for us.
Do you feel rested?
Perhaps today we are tired. We are war-weary. I am not speaking of the war in
I was reading in the paper this
week the story of an Al Qaeda sympathizer in
There is something that we long
for – some healing – some restoration – something new – something deeply right
– and the Lord knows about it. We have
told Him – many times. There is
something here for us today in four stories of conflict in Galilee, when
“Sabbath” came to
As we enter the story of
Mark 2, we enter four stories of controversy, where false grids of
righteousness must be shattered to enter into the true rest that God has for us
in Christ, the Lord of the Sabbath.
Who can
forgive sins?
The first of these is the
amazing story of the paralytic lowered from the roof of the house where Jesus
was staying. I am struck by the joy of
this account as I read it. I imagine the
sound of the footsteps on the roof and the particles of earth falling from the
ceiling as the light begins to dawn from above, and an opening large enough to
fit a man on a bed is created in the roof.
Then the words of Jesus ring out, “Son, your sins are forgiven
you.” What joy!
There is a connection here
between the acts of healing restoration and the hidden restoration of sins
forgiven. It is a display of true
Sabbath, of God’s making things right. It
is an Old Testament connection that Christ deliberately makes for all to
hear. Healing and forgiveness are
somehow related, just as sin and misery are somehow related. Misery came into the world through the sin of
Adam, the first man. Now the new man,
the man from heaven Jesus Christ is able to forgive sin and to reverse the
miserable effects of sin.
Christ could have simply
said, “You are healed.” Instead He
speaks of the forgiveness of sins. This
offends some of the people who are there.
They are scribes, the ministers of their day who were experts in the law
of God and in the oral law that had come through tradition.
Jesus knew in His spirit
what they were thinking. “Only God can
forgive sin. You claim to forgive
sin. You are claiming to be God. We do not see you as God. You cannot forgive sin. You are blaspheming – speaking in a way that
is offensive to God and against God.”
Christ now moves to address
the issues of their hearts. Why does He
do this? He is breaking their grid of
righteousness – the thing that they use to divide good
from evil. Does it seem hard to forgive
sin? It is. It is very hard. Do you think it is harder to say to a
paralytic “Arise, take up your bed and walk?”
OK. Then arise take up your bed
and walk. But it is harder to forgive
the deep problem of sin. Who can forgive
sins? Jesus can. Enter into the joy of it. Arise, take up your bed and walk.
Who can make
tax collectors and sinners righteous?
The next controversy comes
when Jesus proceeds to call a tax collector as one of His disciples, and then
proceeds to eat with the friends of this new follower. The detractors of Jesus begin to wonder, “Why
does he pick the nasty ones? There are
plenty of good folks around.”
To have a fuller
appreciation for this concern, you need to know that tax collectors were listed
along with murderers and robbers as undesirable types in ancient Jewish
religious documents – not the Bible, but other writings. “Sinners” here refers to those who are not
keeping the rules of the religious community – the irreligious. Jesus deliberately seems to pick these
outcasts to eat with and they hear His message.
Once again, He is breaking false grid of righteousness. Good people did not associate with these sinners, but Jesus, who works these amazing miracles and teaches with authority – He associates with them, and even chooses one of them to be one of His key disciples.
By the way, who do you want
to be associated with? The righteous or the sinners, the healthy or the sick, the found or
the lost? The problem with the
righteous, the healthy, and the found is that they do no receive the touch of
this Savior. I would rather admit that I
am a sick lost weary sinner and receive the rest that comes from His presence,
than to sit with the scribes pretending that I have all the
Sabbath I need.
Who can make tax collectors
and sinners righteous? Jesus – He is the
healing physician.
Who can bring
celebration where there is mourning?
When do you fast? According to the Old Testament, there was
only one day per year where fasting was commanded by God, as part of a communal
law. That day was the Day of Atonement,
when
The bigger picture that
Jesus speaks of in this passage is the timing of God’s events of
salvation. He uses the parable of a
wedding to make His point. You fast
while you are waiting for the day, preparing for a future time when the
bridegroom will come. When the
bridegroom comes, to continue in fasting is to reject the joy of the day, as if
you were mourning the presence of the bridegroom, and were somehow against the
wedding. Jesus, the bridegroom of the
people of God, has come. How can His
followers fast? They must celebrate. The day will come when He will be taken away
from them, analogous to the death of the husband after some time of
marriage. Then they will fast. Do you see the big picture? There is a time before the bridegroom comes,
and the people mourn as they wait for his coming. When He comes they celebrate, and they
continue in that celebration until the day when He is taking away from
them. Then they will mourn.
By the way, we find
ourselves in a mixed time today. The
bridegroom is present with us by the Holy Spirit, but He is absent from us in
the body, since He is now at the right hand of the Father. Now there is fasting and there is also
celebration. We do mourn for our sin and
for the oppression and misery that we see around us. But in the midst of our weariness it is the
same Jesus who bids us dance over the joys of the
That is why you are here on
this first day of the week. A new era of
resurrection has begun. Old things must
give way – the new has come. Like new
cloth for a new garment, and new wineskins for new wine, we are in a new era of
resurrection life while we await the coming again of the bridegroom and the
fullness of Sabbath that He brings.
If you wanted to prove your
own righteousness by fasting, the way to do it was to fast two days per
week. That’s what the evidence shows of
the practice of the good people in those days.
But the good people were stuck in a false grid of righteousness which
had to be broken before they could receive the new rest that Christ
accomplished for us by His perfect righteousness and His death on the
cross. No amount of our mourning for our
sin and no amount of fasting to show that mourning will ever make us
acceptable. Only in Christ can we have
the wholeness that we long for.
Who can bring celebration
where there is mourning? Jesus – Enter
into this new life of the resurrection.
He is the bridegroom. Come celebrate!
Who is the
Lord of the Sabbath?
In the fourth and final
passage in this chapter, there is some controversy regarding the
appropriateness of the disciples of Jesus plucking the heads of grain in the
fields and eating them on the Sabbath.
The critics who were there that day saw this as wrong, viewing these
activities as a form of harvesting, thereby violating the command of God. Do you see the point they were making? In their minds and according to their grid of
righteousness, it was OK to eat an apple if it was on the table, but to walk
through the apple orchard, and to pick an apple in order to eat it to satisfy
your hunger, that was clearly wrong. Good people did not do that.
Once again Jesus shows a
better way. He makes two points.
First, the Sabbath was made
for man, not man for the Sabbath.
Sabbath-keeping had become the master for the teachers of the law, and
they were servants of that master. They
thought that by serving their understanding of the Sabbath they were serving
God. But when God came to them in the
flesh, they rejected Him in order to keep their own ideas of
Sabbath-keeping. The Sabbath is a gift
from God for man, not a master to be served.
If there is a Lord that is
to be served, He is God. This brings us
to the second point, because there is such a Lord. Jesus, the Son of Man, is the Lord of the
Sabbath. He is like King David with his
men. He is the King of the kingdom every
day of the week, and He is the Lord of the Sabbath. We need to follow the King of the Kingdom on
this and every other matter. We need to
let Him define what true righteousness is.
The righteous way to keep
the Sabbath is something that Jesus displayed in His life. His method was completely consistent with the
description of the “fast” that God desires from His people,
and the Sabbath-keeping that is a delight to Him. This is presented beautifully in Isaiah 58.
In that chapter, God tells
His people that true religious service is to loose the bonds of wickedness, to
undo the heavy burdens, to let the oppressed go free, to break every yoke, to
share your bread with the hungry, and to bring to your house the poor who are
cast out. When you see the naked, cover
him, and don’t hide yourself from your own flesh. This ends up being a good description of the
Sabbath-living of the Lord Jesus.
The Sabbath has always been
about the culmination of all of God’s good plan. We testify that we believe in the power of
God to save when we care for and feed the oppressed and the poor, when we open
our homes to the lonely and spend meaningful time with our “own flesh” – our
own children, and our brothers and sisters in the household of faith. There is a promise attached to that kind of
living in Isaiah 58. If you sow seeds of
this kind of Sabbath-living, you will reap good things from the Lord. Then the Lord will be your portion, your
exceedingly great reward. He will lead
you and guide you and satisfy your soul with His presence. He will use you as part of his good
restoration team in the church. You
shall delight yourself in the Lord. He
will be your Sabbath.
This is what the Sabbath is
all about. What does this all have to do
with the man who healed a paralytic, announced the forgiveness of sins, chose a
tax-collector as one of his disciples, ate with sinners, celebrated with his
friends, and rejoiced in the good produce of the land as a gift from God on a
Sabbath day’s walk? What does all this
have to do with Jesus Christ?
He is the Lord of the Sabbath,
breaking false grids of righteousness
and bringing true rest and joy.
WHEN HE IS THERE – IT IS SABBATH
False grids of
righteousness
The
teachers of the law knew right from wrong.
They had it all figured out. So
do we sometimes.
Here were their rules that led to some conflict in
1. You don’t tell people their
sins are forgiven
2. You don’t eat with tax
collectors and sinners no matter how much they seem to repent.
3. You don’t celebrate without
balancing it out with a couple of days of fasting per week.
4. You don’t let anyone’s
hunger get in the way of your own display of law-keeping.
In short, you don’t do
Isaiah 58.
Christ breaks the false
grids, not to spoil anyone’s religious fun, but to make way for the better rest
that He alone can bring. Let Him break
your false grid of righteousness by His Word and Spirit today.
What are you counting on to
recommend yourself to God? How do you
know that you are OK with God? If it is
anything other than the perfections of Christ, let that false grid be broken
this morning. Your own righteousness may
seem precious to you, but the Lord has something much better for you.
True rest and
joy
That
better gift is only found in the Lord Jesus Christ, the Lord of the
Sabbath. He has a
righteousness, a redemption, a freedom that your soul is longing for, and
that cannot be found in any rule-keeping or spiritual experience. He has a sure hope of consummation love that
will help you in even the deepest despair that sin and misery have brought into
your life. He has a way of joyful
communion and an engagement in his purposes that begins right now. You don’t have to die to get it. You don’t have to go to heaven to live in
it. It seeks you and finds you now. It is yours as God’s gift to you in His
precious Son.
Conclusion: The Year of Jubilee – The Ultimate Sabbath
Leviticus
chapter 25 includes an instruction to the Israelites concerning the greatest
Sabbath that they could celebrate under the Old Testament Law. It was not merely a Sabbath day. It was a Sabbath year. It was not just the seventh year. It was the Sabbath that came after counting
off seven times seven years. On the
fiftieth year the Jubilee trumpet blew, signaling the beginning of the Year of
Jubilee. In that year liberty was
proclaimed throughout the land to all inhabitants. The poor got a new beginning. You got your land back that you sold when you
were desperate. Slaves were set free, so
that your very life was given back to you, if you had sold yourself as an
indentured servant to a neighbor in order to stay alive. It was the best picture of Sabbath that the
Old Testament had to offer. But in Mark
2 we are presented with One who is greater than any
picture. This man still lives today, and
promises to be with us always. Jesus is
our Jubilee. He is the Lord of the
Sabbath. Enter into the joy this morning
of His great works of restoration.
Some Questions for
Further Reflection:
1.
Why does Jesus say to the
paralytic, “Your sins are forgiven?”
He has determined to connect
this deed of mercy with His preaching of the
2.
Why does Jesus expose the
secret thoughts of the teachers of the law regarding their mental accusation
against Him of blasphemy for declaring the man’s sins forgiven?
He is unwilling to let their
wrong thinking on this matter go unchallenged.
If we think that there can be no declaration of the forgiveness of sins
from the lips of man, then men are consigned to remain paralyzed in sin. Jesus is intent that his down-payment sign
works of restoration be viewed as connected to the work of forgiving sins. He did all this so that, according to His own
words, they might know that the Son of Man has the authority to forgive sins.
3.
Why does God set His loving
affections on the messed up?
God is not a respecter of
persons. Our gradations of relative
righteousness are not all that interesting to Him. It is hearing Him and following Him by faith
with full confidence in the works of His Son that He loves. He displays the glories of His grace by
granting hearing and following to the weak and leaving the self-approved in
their own grid of man-made righteousness.
4.
When will the disciples of
Jesus fast?
At a minimum, they will fast
when He dies and appears to be gone, but perhaps also after He ascends. At that time He is present with us by the
Holy Spirit, but absent from us in His physical body, since He is at the right
hand of the Father.
5.
Is Jesus against Old
Testament piety or is He just against the pharisaic misinterpretation of Old
Testament law?
Certainly He was against the
latter, but even concerning the former, the ceremonial law would need to be put
away as the kingdom had come in Christ.
The pictures contained in the Old Testament Law would now be fulfilled
in Him. The old ways were truly being superceded by the new.
6.
What does all this have to
do with fasting?
There is an order to covenantal
developments. During the time of Old
Testament, preparation fasting was appropriate.
When the King is celebrating, it is consummation time, and there is no
place for fasting. When He is taken up,
we enjoy the new era, and yet we await His return. When He returns there will certainly be no
fasting.
7.
Why does there remain yet a
Sabbath rest for the people of God?
We are still awaiting the
consummation of all things. The Sabbath is
for the good of man – a gift to us for our growth in the Lord while we wait for
the Lord of the Sabbath to fulfill all things.