Hello everyone and welcome today to Trinity Sermons.
Here at Trinity Church, Streetsville, we want to share with you sermons that inspire and
encourage you in your faith journey as together we learn to love Jesus, live like Jesus and
lead others to Jesus.
Today we are finishing up our sermon series, Playing with Fire.
The title of today's sermon is Slow Burn and we will be talking about how Jesus challenged
the idea of the Sabbath and brought about a new way to see this day of rest.
Please make sure to follow our podcast so you don't miss any of our upcoming episodes
and we hope that you enjoy the sermon.
God bless.
A reading from the Gospel of Matthew chapter 12 verses 1 to 14.
At that time Jesus went through the grain fields on the Sabbath.
His disciples were hungry and began to pick some heads of grain and eat them.
When the Pharisees saw this they said to him, look your disciples are doing what is unlawful
on the Sabbath.
He answered, haven't you read what David did when his companions were hungry?
He entered the house of God and he and his companions ate the consecrated bread, which
was not lawful for them to do, but only for the priests.
Or haven't you read in the law that the priests on Sabbath duty in the temple desecrate the
Sabbath and yet are innocent?
I tell you that something greater than the temple is here.
If you had known what these words mean, I desire mercy not sacrifice.
You would have condemned the innocent for the son of man is Lord of the Sabbath.
Going on from that place he went into their synagogue and a man with a shriveled hand
was there looking for a reason to bring charges against Jesus.
They asked him, is it lawful to heal on the Sabbath?
He said to them, if any of you have a sheep and it falls into a pit on the Sabbath, will
you not take hold of it and lift it out?
How much more valuable is a person than a sheep?
Therefore it is lawful to do good on the Sabbath.
Then he said to the man, stretch out your hand.
So he stretched it out and it was completely restored, just as sound as the other.
But the Pharisees went out and plotted how they might kill Jesus.
The word of the Lord.
You probably have noticed that over the past few weeks we have had a lovely fire that has
been burning outside of the church as we began our services each and every week.
There it is.
And it was faithfully tended by Elizabeth and by other people like Bill or Lauren or
by Robin and Chris here.
And you know what was always funny though is that after, right about this time during
the service actually, they would come back into the sanctuary.
And you could always tell when they were coming back into the church because they smelled
like smoke.
They smelled like smoke.
And that Chris would sit right behind me over here and I could always tell, oh, Chris is
back because he smelled like smoke.
Now I'm not saying that they smelled like bad.
Actually I like the smell of smoke.
I don't know about you.
But I wanted to say that at this point, I think all of us should probably be smelling
a bit like smoke because for the past several weeks we have been looking at Jesus and how
Jesus played with fire.
We have been looking at how Jesus lighted and ignited and scorched and torched his way
through the Bible as he challenged and as he confronted some of the cherished symbols
and ideas that God's people held most close to them.
He was really, really playing with fire.
So for example, four weeks ago we saw Jesus just scorch the whole idea of Holy Land, right?
And then three weeks ago we saw how Jesus singed the pages of scripture with his own
interpretation of what the Bible really meant.
And then two weeks ago we saw how Jesus seared a brand new image of family into our imaginations.
And then last week we saw how Jesus was even leaving the temple, the temple itself, smoldering
in a pile of ashes.
In all of these ways, Jesus was seriously, seriously playing with fire.
And I think it is safe to say for that reason that whenever Jesus walked into a room, he
probably smelled a lot like smoke.
You could smell Jesus coming from a mile away there.
Now I want to say that when you play with fire, of course, we know that you get burned,
right?
That's kind of one of the solutions.
That's one of the things that happens when you play with fire.
And so if you're ever wondering why on earth did Jesus get crucified, the answer is because
he said things and he did things that really got under people's skin and he challenged
and he prodded and he poked at things that people held so dear.
So for example, when you saw Jesus in our gospel reading that you just read and the
very last line of the gospel reading is, so the Pharisees went out and they plotted how
they might kill Jesus.
You might say, what is all that about?
Well, by now we should know he's doing it again.
He's playing with fire again.
What did you do this time, Jesus?
What did you say this time?
What fire did you light that has got people so upset this time?
Well, today what we are going to do is we are going to clear the smoke.
We're going to clear the smoke.
We're going to go out with a bang and we're going to look at yet one more, just one more
very precious symbol, one more very precious idea that Jesus just couldn't resist.
He kind of set fire to and he challenged people.
And of course, that tradition, that idea, that practice that I'm talking about was the
practice of Sabbath, the Sabbath rest.
I need to tell you everybody that the Sabbath rest was both a practice and a commandment
that Israel obeyed and defended with fierce intensity, fierce, fierce intensity.
The Sabbath, that day of rest was so essential to who they were that actually the surrounding
nations kind of began to associate Israel with this strange kind of lazy day that they
had once a week.
Who are these people?
Why did they take that day off every week?
And I want to, I want to tell you that it was essential.
It was tied to their very, very identity.
You did not do work on the Sabbath for fear of death.
And I really do mean for fear of death because you can read in the scriptures, you can read
it, for example, in the book of Numbers, there was this fellow one day and he went out and
he started gathering firewood on the Sabbath.
And that was a big, big no-no.
And so the assembly took him outside the camp and what they do, Oh, Larry, you shouldn't
really do that.
They had a good talk with him.
They kind of sorted it out with him.
No, they stoned him to death.
They stoned him to death.
You do not mess with the symbol of Sabbath.
You do not mess with this idea of taking a rest.
Israel and Sabbath were inseparable from the very, very beginning.
And I actually do mean the very beginning, because if you go and you flip to the very
first pages of your Bible, you will see the story of how this Sabbath idea came to pass.
Right?
Here it is.
The moment of the, the kind of the ending point of creation, the seventh day, God had
finished all the work he had been doing.
So on the seventh day, he rested from all his work.
And then God blessed the seventh day and he made it holy because on it, he rested from
all the creating work that he had been doing.
A lot of people think that actually the seventh day of creation, God didn't create anything.
It was the days one, two, three, four, five, and six.
God did all his creating in the seventh day.
He didn't do anything.
And I want to suggest to you that actually on the seventh day, God created something
else.
He created something different in the days one through six.
He was creating space and matter, but on day seven, he was creating time.
God creates time, right?
Day one, day two, day three, day four, day five, day six.
God is creating holy objects and holy space and a holy outer space and moons and planets
and a holy earth and holy creatures and holy animals.
But then on day seven, he creates something else.
He creates holy time, a special and just sacred time that is called the Shabbat, the Sabbath,
the seventh day of creation.
And the scriptures kind of seem to tell us that God just kind of sat down in the midst
of all that he had created.
He celebrated and he delighted in all that he had made.
In fact, what I would like you to do this morning, I would like you to imagine, if you
will, that this chord represents this time, this brand new idea of time that God created
on the seventh day of creation, right?
This time, which began right here on the seventh day, but then it's because God creates time
and time is eternal.
God's time stretches through all of history.
It stretches off into the future.
And God's time, God's time, like everything else with God, it culminates in something
magnificent in the very end.
At the very end of God's time, that rest, which was just like that one day, will reach
its fullness, will reach its completion.
And there will be an eternal rest.
There will be an eternal redemption for all creation and all God's people at the very
end of time.
So that's God's time.
That's God's sacred timeline.
Now you might say, well, what about then us human beings?
Do we operate on God's time?
And the answer, I think, unfortunately, would be no.
As humans, our timeline is kind of different.
We are limited in our time.
We live by days and weeks and months and years.
And our time is actually also kind of holy time too, because God was there when we're
born.
God was there all the days of your life.
God is there on the day that you die.
And yet our time is shorter.
Our time is more limited.
God's sacred, holy time stretches across here.
And our human time is somewhere below and somewhere much more limited.
Now here is the interesting thing.
At some point, well, actually, I'll tell you when it was.
It was when Israel had finally been released from slavery in Egypt.
God felt really, really bad that they had been so overworked and they had never had
a rest.
They had not had anything close to this kind of divine rest that God experienced.
So God said to them, he said, listen, I want to give you a gift.
I want to give you a gift.
He says, here's what I want.
What I want you to do.
I want every seven days, every seven days, I want you to take your time and I want it
to cross over with my time.
Every seven days, your human time will have a moment of overlap with my sacred divine
time or, or as the scriptures put it, remember the Sabbath day by keeping it holy six days,
six days, one, two, three, four, five, six, you shall do all your work.
And then on the seventh day, what I want you to do is cross over into my time on the seventh
day, you're invited to, to overlap with my sacred time.
I'm inviting you into a Sabbath to the Lord, your God on the seventh day.
So that is the best way I think to understand what the Sabbath is.
The Sabbath is not just, Hey, we get to take a day off every seven days.
No, it's a holy overlap with God's time.
There's a way to maybe help you understand it.
And that is like last week, we talked about the temple and one way to understand is that
the temple was like a overlap of human space with God's space, right?
In the same way, Sabbath is an overlap of human time with God's time where we get to
enter into that rest, that delight, that peace that God has prepared for us once every seven
days.
The thing is though, not only were these every seven days an opportunity for great rest and
renewal for God's people, but they also were pointers.
They also became little signs that every time this happened, it was a sign pointing toward
the great rest that was going to happen at the end of time, right?
So, so day one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, stick a sign in the ground to remind
us that one day a great rest is happening.
Stick a sign in the ground, stick a sign in the ground.
Every time that they did this, it was a reminder.
It was a pointer that history is going somewhere and God's great rest is coming.
Now this is where it gets really cool.
God actually decided to go even further than this.
He said, not only do I want you to take one every one day in seven and have a rest for
yourself, but I want you to take one year in every seven and I want you to allow that
whole year to cross over into my holy time.
And so what God did is he created what was called the Sabbath year, the Sabbath year.
And on the Sabbath year, not only do human beings get rest, but the land got rest.
You see on the seventh year, the land was not to be tilled or worked.
It got a rest.
If you were a servant or a slave, you got a rest because you were allowed to be set
free if you wanted.
On the seventh year, if you had financial difficulties, you got rest because your debts
would all be forgiven.
So you can see that this Sabbath year idea, this one year every seven years was an even
greater overlap with God's sacred time than even the one in seven day.
And as a result of that, that overlap every seven years was an even greater sign.
Again, pointing forward to the great day when there would be a rest for all God's people
at the end of time.
Now, I know it sounds crazy, but God went even further than that.
God said, you know what, not only do I want you to take a break once every seven days
and enter into my time, and not only do I want you to take that rest and enter into
my time once every seven years, but every seven times seven years, I want you to celebrate
this great thing that God calls a jubilee.
And on that seventh year, there's something amazing going to happen.
Not only on that year are you going to rest all the land, not only that year are you going
to rest all your slaves and let them go, not only that year are you going to forgive all
debt, but on that year, you're also going to redistribute all the land all across Israel
so that everybody can start over.
Everybody can experience redemption.
Everybody can have a brand new beginning.
This was the jubilee year.
It was the, I mean, you can understand that that was an even greater overlap, an even
greater overlap of human time and God's time, an even greater experience of God's rest.
And I'll say it again, that was an even greater sign, an even greater sign would only happen
maybe once in your lifetime that you would get a chance to experience the jubilee year,
but it was an even greater sign pointing to this future that God had in store for everyone.
So let's just review every seven days, every seven years, every seven times seven years,
there was rest and there was renewal all pointing toward the great future God had in store.
And you might say, Rob, that sounds absolutely fantastic.
I love that.
I would love nothing more than to experience that for myself.
And so your question would be what, what, what was Jesus's problem with this system?
Why was Jesus attacking the Sabbath?
And a lot of people make a mistake and they think that actually Jesus's complaint with
the Sabbath was that he didn't like the way that the rules of the Sabbath were being enforced.
So for example, of course, the teachers of the law and the Pharisees, they had to make
up a bunch of rules to let people know what exactly they could and couldn't do on the
Sabbath day, what they could and couldn't do on the Sabbath year and so on and so forth.
And yes, it did get kind of complicated.
For example, they said on the Sabbath day, you could only walk 2000 cubits, which is
about one kilometer.
You couldn't walk any more than one kilometer because you did, then you were doing work
and you had broken the Sabbath commands.
Another rule was you weren't allowed to carry any heavy burdens.
You weren't allowed to lift things on the Sabbath, which meant that you couldn't wear
jewelry on the Sabbath because by wearing jewelry, you were bearing a burden.
You were carrying something.
So no jewelry on the Sabbath.
They were also told that on the Sabbath, you could not look in the mirror.
You couldn't look in the mirror because if you were to look in the mirror, you might
see a little gray hair.
And if you saw that gray hair, you might be tempted to pluck it out.
And by plucking it out, you know what you've just done?
You've harvested something.
You've reaped.
Therefore, you've done work.
So no looking in the mirror on the Sabbath.
I'm serious.
And then here's my favorite one.
Let's say on the Sabbath day, you wanted to have an omelet.
You wanted to have an egg.
You could have an egg, but you'd have to make sure that the chicken that laid that egg laid
the egg on a day that wasn't the Sabbath day because if the chicken had laid the egg
on the Sabbath day and the chicken had worked, then that meant that you were breaking the
Sabbath by eating the egg.
Now the stipulation was you could actually eat an egg from a chicken that laid the egg
on the Sabbath day.
The only caveat is then you would have to kill the chicken as well because the chicken
had of course broken the Sabbath.
You can imagine that Jesus thought, oh my goodness, he's probably complaining.
You know, all these strange rules.
Yeah, Jesus probably had some questions about how this was being enforced.
But I want to suggest to you this morning that was not the main thing that Jesus took
issue with with all this Sabbath practice.
Are you ready?
The real main thing, the real way that Jesus played with fire was this.
Get ready.
He said, he said, Hey, you remember that long awaited time of rest and renewal?
You know, that promise of some age to come where all things will be made new and everything
will finally have its rest and redemption.
Remember that?
Remember that promise?
Yes.
You look no further and wait no longer because that time has arrived and it has arrived in
me and it has arrived in my life.
Right?
I know Jesus said that God's time and human time overlapped here and here and here and
here and here and here, but they overlap most fully and they overlap completely in me.
In me, Sabbath reaches its full completion.
My time is God's time.
My time is Sabbath time.
It's all arrived in me.
Jesus would say it in other ways.
He would, he would say things like this.
He would say the time is fulfilled and the kingdom of God is at hand.
Friends, this was so dangerous for Jesus to say.
I hope you understand.
He's taking his life in his hands when he says stuff like this.
What he's essentially saying is that that Sabbath idea that began way back on day seven
of creation, seven, seven, seven, seven, seven, seven, seven, all of that was pointing toward
not some, not some future was pointing toward him.
He was not me.
It was pointing toward him.
Right?
He was saying it's all going to be fulfilled in me.
And actually Jesus is saying in a way that in my lifetime, in my lifetime, all those
Sabbath promises, all the rest, all the hope, all the freedom, all the redemption is all
being gathered together and all tied together in me and in my time.
Right?
It, this is, this is actually how it went down with Jesus.
For example, let me give you an example.
One day Jesus went into the synagogue and he was going to read the scriptures.
And so he picked up the part of Isaiah that talks about the great Jubilee year and he
picks it up and he reads it.
Then he closes it and he sits down and you know what his sermon is?
His sermon is this today.
This scripture is fulfilled in your hearing.
What are you talking about Jesus?
I'm saying today that great Jubilee year is here in me.
And surprise, surprise.
They tried to kill them.
They tried to throw him off a cliff.
He would heal people on the Sabbath when you clearly weren't supposed to heal people on
the Sabbath.
In our reading this morning, you heard Jesus heal a man with a withered hand or take for
example, there was a woman for example, who had been crippled for 18 years.
Now on the Sabbath, you weren't supposed to do healing, but Jesus put his hands on her
and immediately she straightened up and praise God.
And you know what?
They plotted to kill Jesus after this moment too.
Why?
Because he wasn't following the Sabbath rules.
Instead, he was acting like he was the ruler of the Sabbath.
He would say things like come to me, all you who are weary and burdened and I will be the
one to give you rest.
And they would say, well, Jesus, how can you give us rest?
It's not the seventh day.
It's not the seventh year.
It's not it's not the fiftieth year of Jubilee.
And he say, listen, listen, I can do whatever I want.
Whenever I want.
I am Sabbath time in the flesh.
I am the Lord of the Sabbath.
The great day is here.
The new day has arrived.
The day of rest has dawned in me.
Guys, these are explosive, explosive words.
And what he was doing, he was essentially lighting a fuse to all of these signs.
These signs are all going to blow up now.
Jesus says he's going to say, you don't need the Sabbath day sign anymore because the Sabbath
has already arrived in its fullness in me.
And you don't need the seven year Sabbath year anymore because that rest you're longing
for has already arrived in me.
And you don't need this anymore because the great Jubilee, the great Jubilee, the great
rest, the great renewal, the great release, it's already arrived in me.
He's blowing it all up.
And I mean, it makes sense.
You don't need signs anymore, right?
Would I go down to square one and put up a sign that says this way to Mississauga?
I'm already in Mississauga.
It doesn't make sense.
Why would you sit there in your bed staring at the alarm clock wondering what time it
is when the sun is already pouring in your window telling you the time is here, the morning
is here.
Jesus says you don't need the signs anymore.
You don't need the signs anymore.
The real thing has arrived.
Paul put it this way.
He called all those Sabbath observances, he calls them shadows.
They were just shadows of things that were to come.
The reality of what was coming has come and it has come in Jesus.
Do you see, I hope you guys are just seeing this and I don't want to go on too long, but
in the same way that Jesus says I'm the real Holy Land, in the same way that he says I'm
the real Moses, in the same way that he says I'm the new family, in the same way that he
says I'm the new temple, he is now saying I am the new Sabbath and I am here 24-7.
And that is the main reason why Christians did not and Christians still do not observe
all the Old Testament practices that went along with the Sabbath because the Sabbath
has fully arrived.
We don't need the signs anymore.
We've already reached our destination.
Now there is another big reason why Christians didn't and don't observe all the old Sabbath
observances of the Old Testament anymore and here it is, here it is.
Of course, Jesus was arrested, he was tried, he was crucified, he was dead and he was buried
and I think they thought that when they had done that they had snipped his lifeline and
that was it for Jesus, but of course, Jesus wasn't operating according to human time,
he was operating according to God's time and you cannot stop God's time and so two days
later on the third day, Jesus rose from the dead.
And I want you just to understand this comparison.
Just as God rested in that first garden after his creating work was done, Jesus was resurrected
in that second garden after his redeeming work was done, but there's a very important
difference.
What day was it when God rested from his work?
It was the one, two, three, four, five, seventh day.
What day was it when Jesus was raised from the dead?
Does anyone know?
It was the first day.
In fact, the gospel writers are very anxious to remind us that it was early on the first
day of the week while it was still dark that they went and discovered that Jesus had risen
from the dead.
And that is the second reason why Christians do not and did not, according to like history
books, they did not observe those old Sabbath observances because Jesus had given us a new
day the first day, Sunday, today.
And Jesus had so transformed time and space that it was impossible now to go back to the
old style of Sabbath keeping.
That time had come to an end.
Jesus gave us a new rest and he's given us a new kind of day making those seventh day
observances obsolete.
Just as a side note, that's why I always never quite understood what the big debate was about,
you know, should we have shops open on Sunday and should the people working on Sunday?
And there was all these campaigns in the seventies and the eighties and people were fighting
about that.
It seems to me they were all kind of misguided because what they were really trying to do
is take all those seventh day Sabbath observances and rules and transfer them to the first day,
day of resurrection, celebration of Christians.
And what I'm trying to say to you is actually those are very, very different things.
Now I think some of you are probably wondering, oh, that kind of sucks because this looked
really good.
And I really was looking forward to kind of incorporating all this nice rest into my life.
And now you're saying it's all obsolete because Jesus has come and created this new day, this
new Sabbath day.
And just as I wrap up this morning, I want to let you know that as always, as always,
whenever Jesus takes something away, he always gives us something way better instead.
Here's the first thing I want to tell you.
You can find your rest in Jesus and you can find that rest 24 seven.
In some ways, what Jesus has done when he rose from the dead is he has created a perpetual
Sabbath.
You don't need to wait for a certain day of the week or a certain year in the calendar
to find your rest in Jesus.
It is always available.
And man, oh man, do some of us here need to take advantage of the rest that Jesus has
for us.
There are some of us here and you're waking up in the morning and you are already tired.
You you you you might be eating well and exercising and even getting good sleep, but the tiredness
is not just a physical thing.
It's a spiritual thing.
It's a tiredness in your soul.
And you need to hear Jesus say, come to me and let me give you my rest.
Or as St. Augustine said, we are restless.
Our hearts are restless until we finally rest in God.
What I'm telling you is the need for rest has never been greater.
But the opportunity for rest has never been closer than it is in Jesus.
So find your rest in Jesus.
Secondly though, this is where it might sound like I'm going back on what I just said.
I'm going to say that we still can practice those Sabbath observances, albeit in a new
way.
Christians of all people should live a life that looks different from the lives of those
around us.
Different in the sense that we should not be overworking, different in the sense that
we should be incorporating times of rest and renewal into our life.
Because if Jesus, our Lord has come, if the Sabbath rest of God is upon us, then shouldn't
that make some difference in your calendar?
Shouldn't that make some difference in your daily schedule?
Shouldn't that change how you plan out your life?
Shouldn't there be times of rest built in if Jesus is your rest?
Jesus came to set us free from stress.
He came to set us free from the expectations others put on us.
He came to set us free from the 80-hour work week.
Came to set us free from our phones, which never ever seem to let us rest.
And so I would say that if our lives do not in some way, if they are not punctuated by
meaningful times of rest, then something is wrong and we have not really grasped what
Jesus came to teach us.
And we have not incorporated it into our life.
And what good is it if we never actually put it into practice?
There remains a Sabbath rest for the people of God.
That's for you and for me.
So make every effort to enter into that rest so that none of us will perish.
It doesn't have to look like the Sabbath rule keeping of old, which means on your day off,
you can fry an egg.
On your day off, you can go gather firewood and have a bonfire with the family and not
be worried that you're going to be stoned to death.
You can wear your jewelry on the Sabbath day, right?
We're celebrating God's rest and we're doing it in a different way.
And here's maybe where I want to invite you to say, how can we do this in a different
way?
Guys, you got to take this course starting February 21st to March 13th here at Trinity
and online.
We're doing it hybrid.
We are kicking off our practicing the way series with a four week in depth look at the
Sabbath practice.
How do we as Christians practice Sabbath in our lives today?
Don't miss this course.
You can register for it.
You can sign up on our events page, on our website, in our church app right now.
Cause guys, if Jesus has transformed all of time, shouldn't that somehow transform your
time, your day to day time?
Finally, if this is true, if Jesus has risen from the dead, then we need to move beyond
the mere idea of rest to resurrection, right?
God's time is not just about the cessation of work.
It's about the resurrection of life.
It's not just about rest.
It's about renewal, right?
Which means that yes, we should find times in our calendars to have some kind of rest,
but because it's a perpetual new day that God has created, we also should be finding
time in our calendars to heal and practice justice and practice compassion.
Jesus healed on the Sabbath day.
We should be healing every day.
Jesus practice justice on the Sabbath day.
We should be seeking justice each and every day.
The Sabbath is not just about finding time in your calendar to slow things down.
It's about finding time in your calendar to raise things up, to raise people up, to raise
up the poor, to raise up the hurting, to raise up the sick.
We've got to somehow weave that great Sabbath renewal into our own lives.
It's not just about rest.
It's about resurrection.
So it's done.
Our series is done.
These five weeks of Jesus playing with fire.
As we let all the smoke clear here, I think that the good news is what we see in the end,
Jesus didn't just leave us with a whole pile of ashes and destruction, but he's given us
life and hope.
Yes, Jesus played with fire.
But when the smoke clears, we see there's a new land for us.
There's a new Moses for us.
There's a new family for us.
There's a new temple for us.
And there's a new rest waiting for us.
Jesus didn't just go around destroying these things, leaving us with nothing.
He went around and transformed these things and has given us everything.
The old is gone, but it has been renewed.
From the ashes that he left behind, new hope and new life rises up.
Thanks be to God.
Amen.
Thanks so much for joining us today.
And we hope that you found the sermon something that you will take with you all week long.
And make sure to come back again next week.
And thanks again for listening.
Today's sermon was taken from the February 4th, 2024 service at Trinity Church, Streetsville
in Mississauga, Ontario.