Matthew 12 - The Sabbath is for Mercy
Chapter 12 and most of 13 happen on a single Sabbath day. This, of course, was a Saturday. (The Sabbath is always on Saturday in Scripture.) [*]
Jesus connects the proper use of the Sabbath with God's desire for mercy. (We tend to associate it with sacrifice.) The Sabbath is God's act of mercy toward us. It is "good" and therefore "good" is a legitimate part of it. Healing, teaching, exhorting, and even rebuking are all Sabbath-kosher activities. After all, Jesus does them. They are acts of mercy; They are good.
In Mark's version, Jesus also says, "The Sabbath was made for man, and not man for the Sabbath." Again, the Sabbath is God's act of mercy toward us; It is good.
Jesus taught on this Sabbath that "a tree is known by its fruit." In this context, the question arises, "Is our fruit mercy or sacrifice (that is, legalism)?" Are we "good" (merciful) trees or "bad" (legalistic) trees? Don't worry about explaining yourself. What does your fruit tell you? In other words, what is in you heart: mercy or sacrifice (law)?
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*[Excursus (That's a fancy word for "Rabbit Trail"):
The New Testament never describes Sunday as a prescribed day of worship. The passage most suited to that task (1 Corinthians 16:2) is really about the priority of individual tithing ("store up" your tithe first thing, so you will have it to give), not about when Christians should worship. So, why do the majority of Christians worship on Sundays instead of on Saturdays? That is a long story, with some good practices as well as lots of politics (secular and religious) involved. What follows is merely an introduction to your own research and pondering:
In the first 2 centuries after Christ, many Christians began to worship on both Saturday and Sunday; Saturday because it was the Sabbath (The Lord's Day) and Sunday because it was the Resurrection Day and the First Day of Creation. Beginning in Rome, the Western church started transferring the festival celebration of the biblical Sabbath to Sunday and making Saturday a fasting day. (It should be noted that Rome was also the early hub for anti-semitism in the church.) The Emperor Constantine declared Sunday (the pagan day of solar worship) "a day of rest" for all (321 A.D.) compromising between the pagans of Rome and the minority practice of Christians in Rome and Alexandria, and likely averting a revolt among a growing populace of slaves in the city. (These Roman Christians also took on and passed on many of the sun-worshipper practices we see in modern Christianity.) In the church itself, the Council of Laodicea (364 A.D.) made it illegal to "be idle" on Saturday or else be excommunicated, effectively outlawing the Sabbath. However, this decree was ignored by most Christians until the fifth century while the church in Rome increased its (extremely unbiblical) pre-eminance over the other churches, and forced them into their anti-Semitic stance.
Jesus himself worshipped on the Sabbath (Saturday), as did all of his early followers. Additionally, the Book of Revelation is most likely refering to the Sabbath when it describes John's vision as on The Lord's Day. Some early church leaders proclaimed that the two days should be viewed as "sisters" and both employed in worship. These early leaders sometimes differentiated the two days as The Sabbath and The Lord's Day, which may have cause later confusion, since the biblical definition for "The Lord's Day" is either the Sabbath of the Day of Judgment while they used it to refer to the Resurrection Day. However, the observance of BOTH DAYS was the common practice in much of the early church and even into the Middle Ages. In fact, the Ethiopian Church still has this practice TO THIS VERY DAY.
Now, it may not matter which day we gather together to worship on. Personally, I don't think it is technically appropriate to refer to Sunday as "The Sabbath", but I am a technical kind of guy. There is nothing actually wrong with worshiping on Saturday or Sunday or any other day. The issue is what do we do with The Sabbath, since keeping it holy is of God's 10 identifiers for what his people look like. As Christians, I do believe we should try to "Keep the Sabbath" (Saturday) in the way that Jesus kept it (see post above), setting it apart from the rest of the week, even if we do not do it corporately. (This is not legalism, it is simply an effort to model our lives after Jesus.) He did instruct us the teach others to do all that he taught. But, our God is also a God of grace, so I can't be that dogmatic about any of my opinions on the matter. Actually, I'd love to see us return to the practice of worshipping on both days! Now, that would be amazing!
So, there are lots of reasons we worship on Sundays instead of Saturdays, but none of them come as a command from Scripture. Rather, the Bible tells us to keep the Sabbath day holy, emphasizing it as a day of God's rest, in contrast to a day of His labor. There is likely nothing wrong with Christians worshiping on Sunday. It just isn't in Scripture. Why, then, should we not also sanctify Saturday as well?]
Jesus connects the proper use of the Sabbath with God's desire for mercy. (We tend to associate it with sacrifice.) The Sabbath is God's act of mercy toward us. It is "good" and therefore "good" is a legitimate part of it. Healing, teaching, exhorting, and even rebuking are all Sabbath-kosher activities. After all, Jesus does them. They are acts of mercy; They are good.
In Mark's version, Jesus also says, "The Sabbath was made for man, and not man for the Sabbath." Again, the Sabbath is God's act of mercy toward us; It is good.
Jesus taught on this Sabbath that "a tree is known by its fruit." In this context, the question arises, "Is our fruit mercy or sacrifice (that is, legalism)?" Are we "good" (merciful) trees or "bad" (legalistic) trees? Don't worry about explaining yourself. What does your fruit tell you? In other words, what is in you heart: mercy or sacrifice (law)?
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
*[Excursus (That's a fancy word for "Rabbit Trail"):
The New Testament never describes Sunday as a prescribed day of worship. The passage most suited to that task (1 Corinthians 16:2) is really about the priority of individual tithing ("store up" your tithe first thing, so you will have it to give), not about when Christians should worship. So, why do the majority of Christians worship on Sundays instead of on Saturdays? That is a long story, with some good practices as well as lots of politics (secular and religious) involved. What follows is merely an introduction to your own research and pondering:
In the first 2 centuries after Christ, many Christians began to worship on both Saturday and Sunday; Saturday because it was the Sabbath (The Lord's Day) and Sunday because it was the Resurrection Day and the First Day of Creation. Beginning in Rome, the Western church started transferring the festival celebration of the biblical Sabbath to Sunday and making Saturday a fasting day. (It should be noted that Rome was also the early hub for anti-semitism in the church.) The Emperor Constantine declared Sunday (the pagan day of solar worship) "a day of rest" for all (321 A.D.) compromising between the pagans of Rome and the minority practice of Christians in Rome and Alexandria, and likely averting a revolt among a growing populace of slaves in the city. (These Roman Christians also took on and passed on many of the sun-worshipper practices we see in modern Christianity.) In the church itself, the Council of Laodicea (364 A.D.) made it illegal to "be idle" on Saturday or else be excommunicated, effectively outlawing the Sabbath. However, this decree was ignored by most Christians until the fifth century while the church in Rome increased its (extremely unbiblical) pre-eminance over the other churches, and forced them into their anti-Semitic stance.
Jesus himself worshipped on the Sabbath (Saturday), as did all of his early followers. Additionally, the Book of Revelation is most likely refering to the Sabbath when it describes John's vision as on The Lord's Day. Some early church leaders proclaimed that the two days should be viewed as "sisters" and both employed in worship. These early leaders sometimes differentiated the two days as The Sabbath and The Lord's Day, which may have cause later confusion, since the biblical definition for "The Lord's Day" is either the Sabbath of the Day of Judgment while they used it to refer to the Resurrection Day. However, the observance of BOTH DAYS was the common practice in much of the early church and even into the Middle Ages. In fact, the Ethiopian Church still has this practice TO THIS VERY DAY.
Now, it may not matter which day we gather together to worship on. Personally, I don't think it is technically appropriate to refer to Sunday as "The Sabbath", but I am a technical kind of guy. There is nothing actually wrong with worshiping on Saturday or Sunday or any other day. The issue is what do we do with The Sabbath, since keeping it holy is of God's 10 identifiers for what his people look like. As Christians, I do believe we should try to "Keep the Sabbath" (Saturday) in the way that Jesus kept it (see post above), setting it apart from the rest of the week, even if we do not do it corporately. (This is not legalism, it is simply an effort to model our lives after Jesus.) He did instruct us the teach others to do all that he taught. But, our God is also a God of grace, so I can't be that dogmatic about any of my opinions on the matter. Actually, I'd love to see us return to the practice of worshipping on both days! Now, that would be amazing!
So, there are lots of reasons we worship on Sundays instead of Saturdays, but none of them come as a command from Scripture. Rather, the Bible tells us to keep the Sabbath day holy, emphasizing it as a day of God's rest, in contrast to a day of His labor. There is likely nothing wrong with Christians worshiping on Sunday. It just isn't in Scripture. Why, then, should we not also sanctify Saturday as well?]
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