Sermon
The Sabbath Day
April 21-22, 2001
Pastor Donald Sheley

I trust that you have your bulletins, and inside your bulletin is a series of notes. If you don't have notes just raise your hand because we'll not have time to go through all of the notes, and as you know who worship with us Sunday after Sunday, I prepare a lot of information for you and then I just have the time to touch upon what I think is possibly most important. And today we have come to a part in the story that we've been thinking about now for some weeks. If you'd like to take out your pew Bible, there, the red pew Bible, it's found I think on page 716. Or if you just have notes, we'll read them from the notes, but it's an interesting story and let me just give you the background.

We've come to chapter 5 in John and it's a transitional chapter because we'll learn today that it's at this point in the ministry of Jesus the crowds turned against Him and the religious leaders plotted to kill Him. And what had happened is Jesus had visited Jerusalem at a day, a festival, He walked away from all the crowds, probably down at church, and He went out to a place where needy people were stationed. It was a pool called the Pool of Bethesda. And it was there at that pool that a multitude of lame and halt and blind people in deep physical need. They filled the porticoes and the porches around that pool and they had this in mind, they had learned that at certain times an angel would come down and stir the water and the first person in, as the way they believed it, was healed. Jesus stands there for a few moments I'm sure that day and He views the crowd, and He sees a man over here that has His attention. The man has been ill for 38 years. He's a paralytic, can't walk. Jesus walks over to him and He asks him a very interesting question: Would you like to be healed? And the fellow said, Sir, every time that water begins to move I try to get to the pool, but nobody helps me and somebody gets in front of me and I never make it. Jesus said, why don't you pick up your bed and walk?

Now I'm in the middle of my notes and I'm at, right there where I've underlined and it says, and that day that Jesus did the miracle was a Sabbath Day. So the Jews therefore said to him who was cured, It's the Sabbath; it's not lawful for you to carry your bed. He answered them, He who made me well said to me, Take up your bed and walk. Then they asked him, Who is the Man who said to you, Take up your bed and walk? But the one who healed did not know who it was, for Jesus had withdrawn, a multitude being in that place. And afterward Jesus found him in the temple, and said to him, See, you've been made well. Sin no more, lest a worse thing come upon you. So the man departed and told the Jews that it was Jesus who had made him well. And for this reason the Jews persecuted Jesus, and sought to kill Him, because He had done these things on the Sabbath.

I've suggested in our note that we come now to a place in our study of this gospel where it strikes an ominous note. The crowds have turned against Christ. The religious leaders now are plotting to kill Him, and He's got to live with this death threat for the days of His ministry. And the reason why is because He did something that, according to their religious prohibitions, was a violation of Sabbath because the Jewish people believed that no one takes any effort, or should take any effort, to heal anybody on the Sabbath. That is a form of work and therefore it's not to be done. It's a sin.

I'm on page 2, and down about four lines, I make the observation in our notes; The law of God was a series of great wide principles which men were left to apply and to carry out throughout the years. Let me stop there. When we go back into the writings of the Old Testament God was quite simple in His instructions. He gave us the Ten Commandments. He didn't make them complex. He just said thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, with all thy soul, with all thy mind. Simple. Thou shalt have no other gods before you, no idols. Simple. And on and on went the various regulations, but quite simple, quite easy to understand. But in those days the religious leader says, but normal people can't really understand what God said so we're going to tell you what He meant. So the law simply said that the Sabbath day must be different from any other day. That on it neither man nor his servants nor his animals must work. In other words, Jesus said, on the Sabbath day nobody works. Simple.

But, the religious leaders got involved and said well we're going to have to tell you what the definition of work is. So they laid out thirty-nine different classifications of work, one of which had to do with this whole matter of carrying a burden. In other words, this is religion folks. One of them, and I've copied them from some of the ancient directives, some of the writings. Example number one -- a man might not go out on the Sabbath wearing one sandal, unless he had a wound in his foot. Now the reasoning was that this would give rise to suspicion that he might be carrying his sandal under his cloak, which was a forbidden work. But if he was wounded, however, nobody would think he had another sandal with him. Religion folks. Example number two -- while it was quite in order to borrow wine and oil from a neighbor on the Sabbath, one must not say, "Lend me them". To say this would imply that a transaction was being made, and transactions or any kind of commerce was not allowed on Sunday. So if you went to your neighbor and asked for some item you had to make sure that you said it the right way so it didn't sound that you're trying to work out a transaction with them.

I like this one. A man should not search his clothing on the Sabbath looking for fleas. Now this is what they set folks. This is religion. Nor should he read by lamplight. The point of this latter is that he might be engrossed in his reading and, forgetful that it was the Sabbath, he might perform the work of tipping the lamp to make the oil flow into the wick so that he would have a better light. And that's work, tipping the lamp is work so it's a sin. Ladies, I've got one for you. A woman was forbidden to dress her hair or paint her eyelids. Now I didn't know they did that 3000 years ago. I learned something when I was studying. For she would then be engaged in the forbidden work of building or dyeing. And that one I haven't got figured out yet. How is it categorized as an effort in building when the lady is trying to make herself look prettier, but that was a sin to fix your eyelids, ladies. Aren't you glad you didn't live then?

Now here's another one. It has to do with a toothache. One must not put vinegar on one's teeth in an attempt to soothe the ache that would be a forbidden act of healing. And this is what they got Jesus on. It was against the regulation to help somebody get well on the Sabbath. So if you had a toothache you could not put vinegar on your aching tooth. But look at this is: but it was permitted to take vinegar in the ordinary course of a meal, and the rabbis added philosophically, "If he's healed, he's healed." In other words, you might not put it on a tooth, but fill your mouth with vinegar and just kind of let it sit there for a while then that's all right. That's not a sin. You say, Pastor, was that how religion was in Jesus' day? That's exactly folks why Jesus didn't like the religious people of His day. They had taken something so simple: God says don't work on the Sabbath, and they put all these prohibitions. And they took a day that was intended to be a day of celebration and refreshment and relaxation and fellowship, and they turned it into something that was absolutely a painful experience to go through Sabbath.

Now it was obvious from such regulations that there were many ways in which the unwary might fall into a breach of the Sabbath. But it was also the case that the knowledgeable were able to get around many of the regulations. Now listen to this one. It was stipulated that one must not carry things in either hand, or bosom, or on the shoulder. Now these were ordinary methods of carrying things and were clearly work. But another regulation said: If he took it out on the back of his hand. Now catch this: if I picked up this this way I'm sinning on the Sabbath because I'm doing it the ordinary way of lifting an object. But if I somehow can work it out so that I can get my hand and I carry it on the top of my hand, now I'm not sinning because I'm doing it differently than you normally do it. Now look at this, either on the back of his hand or with his foot or with his mouth or with his elbow, or in his ear (now that's a sight of) or in his hair or in his wallet carried mouth downward, or between his wallet and his shirt, or in the hem of his skirt, or in his shoe or in his sandal, he is not culpable since he has not taken it out after the fashion of them that take out a burden. In other words, if you can figure out a way to do it different than you did it on Friday, even as stupid as it may look, you're not sinning. You say, Pastor, I now understand why Jesus got fed up being around those religious people. I mean, that was religion folks. In fact, when you go back through the writings it's thousands and thousands and thousands of these stipulations.

Now here's one. In those days they had wooden teeth. I mean, they made them out of wood just like false dentures that we make today. But when you went to the temple or the synagogue you had to take your teeth out because that was carrying a burden. Now who would want to go to church with their teeth out? (Congregation laughs) And, if you had a wooden leg, you had to take the wooden leg off because you were carrying a burden and have to have somebody else help you to church. Interesting, isn't it? We are reminded of Jesus' castigation of those who put heavy burdens on other people but did not lift them themselves. And clearly anyone with a very good knowledge of the regulations would not only be able to forbid other people from doing many harmless things, but would find ways of doing most things he wanted to do himself. Now let's put that down where you and I live. You say I'm glad we don't have those kinds of regulations. Well I was raised in a religion, I came from a wonderful background but it was called the holiness group. And, I mean we had regulations, dos and don'ts, a mile high. Ladies, in my church when I was a little boy, 67 years ago, if you wore makeup you were Miss Jezebel, and make sure the preacher would really go at you when he started preaching. And I think what it was, the uglier you could be the more spiritual you're supposed to be, (Congregation chuckles) and my church really rang the bell on that one. (Congregation laughs)

I was taught as a little boy that it's a sin to shoot pool. And we lived in a little community with only 300 people and there was only one place to sin and that was at the pool hall, because there was a grocery store, a barbershop, and the place of sin. Now I was told that if I walked by the pool hall and Jesus came I would be left behind because He wouldn't come looking for me at the pool hall. So I'd always when I'd leave the store go across the street up that side of the street and then make my way home. I didn't want to get left behind if Jesus came. Religion? Yeah. Our family was very, very strict when it came to Sunday, the Lord's Day. Mother never cooked on Sunday. She cooked on Saturday. And here's five boys, and on Sunday after we went to church we were supposed to spend the afternoon in bed. Now that's ridiculous for a 10-year-old boy. (Congregation laughs) Because the snow, it had snowed all night and the schoolhouse hill was iced, and I mean, your sled would go zoom. But we couldn't go sledding on Sunday because it was a sin. So I decided to become a sinner one Sunday. (Congregation chuckles) I snuck out the back door, into the woodshed, got my sled, and hightailed up to the top of the hill, and aahhh, four or five blocks just right down. But at the bottom of the hill was my home, and the day before Dad had dug out the snow to get the car out so he had this kind of snow embankment, and during the night it froze like ice. So I'm coming down this hill, something distracted me, I guess it might have been a guilty conscience or something. I looked to see if mother was watching, and I tilted that sled and hit that block of ice. My face turned three times its size and I still remember mother coming out and saying; that will teach you to sin on Sunday. (Congregation chuckles) And so she said, you get back into bed. You say, that's religion? Yeah.

Some of you sitting here know, you've come from religious backgrounds where prohibitions and restrictions were set up in the name of religion, but had nothing to do with your relationship with God. I was told that if you ever saw a movie picture you were sinning. Now I've got a confession to make. I went all the way through college and I was into the ministry for two years, and I'm in my 20s now, and I still haven't seen a movie. One day I read the announcement that this great new movie called Ben Hur was being shown at the Cornet Theater over on the Geary Boulevard, and I'm a preacher. So I decided I'm going to sin (congregation chuckles) so I sneak out the door of my church office, get in my car, go the long way around, park in the farthest point in the parking lot, try to hide, and I got in the back seat up there in the Cornet Theater. And once that film started for 2 1/2 hours I cried. I thought, isn't this wonderful. The research, the history, the magnificence of the filming; I just sat there and I'm writing down notes and I'm getting sermon after sermon. I go back four times that same week, and what got to me, was you remember at the end of that film there's that earthquake, and the rocks are rending, and the rain starts coming, and the rain mixes with the blood from the cross and it flows down the cross then gets into the stream. And I thought to myself what a marvelous story of God's redemptive cleansing power.

So what I'm saying folks is all of us come from backgrounds the same thing that Jesus walked into that day, prohibitions all over the place call it religion, but it made a day that God had intended to be a day of joy and celebration a day of pain. Now I'm in my notes and I'm down at the bottom of page 3. Consider our story. For the first time in thirty-eight years, the paralytic was walking, his bed was under his arm. There was a noticeable spring in his step. He might even have been skipping. Then he heard a voice asking, "Hey, what are you doing with that bed? Don't you know that's illegal?" The healed paralytic stopped to reply, "Well, yes, but you see, I've just been healed! I was down by the Pool of Bethesda. I've been crippled for thirty-eight years. I was lying next to the pool, and a man walked by me and asked if I wanted to be healed, and I said yes. And He asked me to stand up, and I tried and found my legs strengthened. I can't tell you how great it feels. I mean you've been in bed for thirty-eight years and get up and walk you'd be jumping too, right? And it's in that atmosphere of joy and celebration that the healed man is interrogated by these religious people. He was examined by the experts and while, he himself would not have known all the regulations, he knew that all sorts of work were forbidden on the Sabbath. He knew also that his judges were in a position to do him harm if they judged him guilty of transgression. So he was in a difficult position.

You say, they could do him harm? You go back in the book of Exodus and here's a man goes out to pick up sticks on the Sabbath, he's violated the Sabbath, they stone him to death; just for picking up sticks. I mean that's how serious they took all these regulations. So here's that fellow he's been healed, but he's got this bed because the man who healed him told him to carry his bed, and he knows he's got a problem. So he defended himself by saying that it wasn't his fault. The man who healed him had told him to take up his pallet and walk. Now that's good logic. If a man had the authority and the power to say, Son, take up your bed and he was healed, that same authority if he told him to walk he's going to do it, and he did. What else could he do?

One of the regulations provided that if a man was carried on a couch, he is not culpable by reason of the couch. In other words, if you are carried on a bed then you're not sinning, but when you carry the bed your sinning. That's confusing, isn't it? And so our lame man presumably did not know the regulation, but his judges did. So he was in danger of punishment and judgment. And the Pharisees demanded to know who had healed the paralytic. The Bible says, "The man who was healed had no idea who it was, for Jesus had slipped away into the crowd that was there. Latter Jesus found him at the temple." Well why is he at the temple? Because the Old Testament regulation was that when you get healed, especially if you had leprosy, the first place you went is to report it to the priest who had examined you. And you went through a seven-day examination, and after the seventh day he could mark you clean, healed. So the man did exactly what he knew was right. He'd been healed. He went to the temple to report it to his priest, and the result was they're criticizing him for carrying his pallet.

Now Jesus was not caught unawares by their attack. In fact, He devastated them with a reply: "My Father is always at His work to this very day, He said, and I, too, am working." What Jesus was saying that when God created the earth, He rested on the seventh day, but He had to keep on working in order to hold the universe together. God kept working in matters providentially in people's lives as well. And what Jesus was saying, "I'm working too." Now any scholarly Jew would have understood what Jesus was trying to say. One ancient writer said: "God never ceases doing, but as it is the property of fire to burn and snow to chill, so it is the property of God to do or to act." Another writer says: "The sun shines; the rivers flow, the processes of birth and death go on on the Sabbath as on any other day; and all of this is the work of God." So what Jesus was saying is I'm doing just like God does. Even though He finished creation and He rested from creating, yet He has continued down through time always showing His mercy and His love and His grace. Every moment of the day in history God is always at work demonstrating His love and His mercy. Now it was this that really put them on the brink of violence, because by comparing what He did as to what God, that made Him equal with God. That's blasphemy, and it was for this reason that they commenced plotting the death of Jesus Christ, because He did something of compassion on a day that He was prohibited from doing it.

It's almost time for dinner so let me close this down real quick. Here's the lesson I learn today from this story: and it's this, God makes His ways for man very, very simple, but we religionists and organized religion have a capacity to complicate religion. And I think more people have been scared away from the church because of all the complications we've added to something that should be so simple, and that's loving God with all of our hearts. Now, I'm against religion folks. I don't believe in religion. Let that one sink in. I believe that Christianity is not a religion. Christianity is a relationship, and there is a vast difference between religion and relationship; a vast difference. Religion says, do this, don't do this, do this, don't do this, you can do this, you can't do this. Relation says, what can I do to show my love towards the one that I love? That's different.

It's that way in human relations, isn't it? When you fall in love you don't have to be told how to act towards the one you love. Forty-nine years ago I fell in love with now my wife after forty-nine years, and nobody had to tell me to throw away my address book. Nobody. Nobody had to tell me to throw away my telephone directory. There was one telephone number and there was one address. That was her home, and that was the most important home in my life. What I'm trying to say is when you fall in love the focus becomes very fixed, and then my challenge was to do everything I could to show my love and appreciation for the object of the one I loved. Right? You all understand that. That's true in life, and it really should be true in our Christian faith, and that is, we should seek to fall in love with Jesus and then so live our lives that whatever day it is, we do that which brings honor and joy and pleasure to His heart.

You know someone asked, they said, Pastor, your church is not a part of any denomination, what are you here for? One goal and that's to help people fall in love with Jesus. That's our mission. I'm often accused of being a liberal pastor because I won't get up here and tell you don't do this, and do do this, and don't do that. That's not my line. Why our church is here, and that is to help you to so fall in love with Christ that that love relationship, no matter what day of the week it is, you'll act in a way that brings honor and glory to the one you love, and that's Jesus Christ. That to me is Christianity. Amen? And I pray, you know, when it comes to this whole issue. You say, well Pastor, what about Sabbath and what about Sunday? Well that's covered in the rest of the notes, but we don't have time. It's dinnertime so you can read it over your dinner plate, but I maintain that everyday should be a Sabbath in our experience, and that is everyday is a day that we through our lives, through our actions we worship the Lord in different ways bringing honor to Him. That's really the way it should be. So to me everyday is the Lord stay and everyday is Sabbath. It's the day of joy and it's the day of celebrating my wonderful object of love, my Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, and I want that to be the same for you. Amen.

Father, we do in religion make things very complicated when You want to make it so simple. Some of us live with prohibitions that have marked our minds and our personalities, and as we've grown and thought things through and read Your Bible we've realized that some of the things we were taught had nothing to do with our Christian faith. And I pray that You'll help us to make our Christian very simple; love You with all of our hearts dear God, to serve You every day of our lives, and do our best to make sure that all that we do this Christ-like. That's the kind of Christianity we want so please help us, and everybody said, amen. Thank you all for coming. God bless you. God bless you.