What Did Jesus Teach About the Sabbath?

Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age. -Matthew 28:19-20

This is the fourteenth part of my series on what Yeshua (Jesus) taught his Jewish disciples to teach the newly minted Gentile disciples to obey. This is the last entry of this series (yes, I know I've been long-winded) and after this, I'll try to come up with some general conclusions about what this all means. Before we get into today's subject, let's review a summary of my previous blog post, What Did Jesus Teach in the Beatitudes:

In a nutshell, Yeshua teaches us to hang on, to keep the faith, to persevere in the face of hardship, for although life in this world now is hard and we suffer, great is our reward in the Kingdom if we stay the course and complete the race. Praiseworthy is the person who obeys Your mitzvos and takes to his heart Your teaching and Your word.

The Sabbath is either the most obvious commandment to understand or the most confusing. In Judaism, Shabbos observance is a lovely and sacred weekly event, when everyone puts down their labors and strife and acknowledges the God of Creation. Christianity seems to be a little more confused on the Sabbath or at least the Jewish interpretation of it. On the one hand, Jewish Shabbat observance seems an unnecessary chore of "you can't do this" when after all, Jesus freed us from the law. On the other hand, they say that Sunday, the Lord's Day, has replaced the Shabbat, and is a day on which a special Sunday worship traditionally occurs, along with Sunday brunch, mowing the lawn, and a few rounds of golf. The freedom of the Lord's Day. I'm sorry if a sound a bit "snarky", but Christianity did itself and we Gentiles a great disservice by eliminating the loveliness and holiness of the Sabbath.

But what did Jesus teach about the Sabbath?

At that time Jesus went through the grainfields 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 he and 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 on the Sabbath the priests in the temple desecrate the day and yet are innocent? I tell you that one greater than the temple is here. If you had known what these words mean, 'I desire mercy, not sacrifice,' you would not have condemned the innocent. For the Son of Man is Lord of the Sabbath." -Matthew 12:1-8

This is one of two lessons Yeshua teaches about the Sabbath according to Matthew, although there are additional lessons in other Gospels. In this saying, from a Christian point of view, it's easy to read into Yeshua's words and believe he's saying it's OK to do away with the Sabbath and yet remain innocent. Did Yeshua say that he and his disciples just canceled the Sabbath? What would cause him to issue such a reversal over the various parts of the Torah and the Prophets commanding Shabbat observance? What did he really say?

What does David eating the Priest's bread, Priests performing their sacred duty on the Shabbat, and Yeshua and his disciples gleaning and eating on Shabbat have in common? Were they all lawless and disrespectful of God's laws?

Yeshua quotes the Prophet Hosea as part of the answer: "For I desire mercy, not sacrifice, and acknowledgment of God rather than burnt offerings." (Hosea 6:6). This is somewhat the same message as we see here:

"Well said, teacher," the man replied. "You are right in saying that God is one and there is no other but him. To love him with all your heart, with all your understanding and with all your strength, and to love your neighbor as yourself is more important than all burnt offerings and sacrifices." -Mark 12:32-33

This is a response to Yeshua and his interpretation of the two greatest commandments by one of the Torah teachers and the teacher seems to say that the core of the Torah isn't in the raw mechanics of obedience but the intent and the heart behind obedience. It doesn't make spirit vs action mutually exclusive terms, but rather, two bookends containing the entire Torah between them.

While some of the Pharisees were criticizing Yeshua and his disciples for gleaning for food (working) on the Sabbath, they were emphasizing the mechanics of Shabbat observance without taking into consideration the intent of the Shabbat. Yeshua also seems to be saying that, if you have to make a decision between the two, it's better to "err" on the side of mercy. David, the Priesthood, and Yeshua's disciples were all innocent of any violation 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 accuse Jesus, they asked him, "Is it lawful to heal on the Sabbath?"

He said to them, "If any of you has 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 man 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. -Matthew 12:9-14

Yeshua could have waited 24 hours to heal this guy. He wasn't like a sheep in a pit, who would certainly suffer and might even die if left there until the Shabbat ended. The guy probably lived with that shriveled hand for years. Another day wouldn't have made much difference. Yeshua was trying to make a point:

How much more valuable is a man than a sheep! Therefore it is lawful to do good on the Sabbath. -Matthew 12:12

I doubt all this means that God was reversing traditional Shabbat observance. I doubt Yeshua is saying we need to cancel our worship and our prayers so that we can all go out and perform acts of good that could have waited until the next day or that we could have done the previous day. Remember, he was making a point to an audience that needed to hear a specific message.

I do believe Yeshua's lesson means we need to think about our Shabbat observance. Are we observing the Shabbat as a matter of robotic mechanics, going through the motions like so many wind-up toy dolls and criticizing anyone who operates outside of our rigid paradigm, or are we observing the Shabbat in the Spirit of the Shabbat, as God originally designed it to be?

By the seventh day God had finished the work he had been doing; so on the seventh day he rested from all his work. And God blessed the seventh day and made it holy, because on it he rested from all the work of creating that he had done. -Genesis 2:2-3

It's pretty hard to get past the Genesis 2 establishment of the Shabbat and interpret it as a "Jewish" observance, since it's clear here that the seventh day was made holy since the days of Adam. Resting on the seventh day is a demonstration and declaration of God as the God of all Creation. Here's another example:

"Remember the Sabbath day by keeping it holy. Six days you shall labor and do all your work, but the seventh day is a Sabbath to the LORD your God. On it you shall not do any work, neither you, nor your son or daughter, nor your manservant or maidservant, nor your animals, nor the alien within your gates. For in six days the LORD made the heavens and the earth, the sea, and all that is in them, but he rested on the seventh day. Therefore the LORD blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy. -Exodus 20:8-11

While Moses is specifically addressing the Children of Israel as well as the Gentile mixed multitude who also accepted the Torah at Sinai, the Shabbat is still defined by the holiness of the seventh day after creation. We do see a change in the following, however:

"Observe the Sabbath day by keeping it holy, as the LORD your God has commanded you. Six days you shall labor and do all your work, but the seventh day is a Sabbath to the LORD your God. On it you shall not do any work, neither you, nor your son or daughter, nor your manservant or maidservant, nor your ox, your donkey or any of your animals, nor the alien within your gates, so that your manservant and maidservant may rest, as you do. Remember that you were slaves in Egypt and that the LORD your God brought you out of there with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm. Therefore the LORD your God has commanded you to observe the Sabbath day. -Deuteronomy 5:12-15

At the banks of the Jordan, on the threshold of the promise fulfilled, Moses presents the commandment to keep the Sabbath to the children of the slaves who came out of Egypt as a commemoration of the release from bondage. Is this when God made the Sabbath a fully Jewish event? Does God think in terms of either/or?

Westerners sometimes get accused of being too locked into linear thinking. We categorize and pigeon-hole everything and do our level best to eliminate ambiguity and double-meaning. Computers "think" in binary and apparently, so do we. But I've been told that Hebraic thought is more global and that themes, relationships, and connections are interwoven into a complex and sometimes paradoxical tapestry. It's sometimes explained this way:

When you come to a fork in the road, take it. -Yogi Berra

While Berra never meant for his words to hold any significant philosophical meaning, in this case, I think they do. I think that the Sabbath can both be a special commemoration for the Jews of their release from slavery in Egypt and a commemoration for all humanity that God is the God of Creation and is the God of all of us.

"As the new heavens and the new earth that I make will endure before me," declares the LORD, "so will your name and descendants endure. From one New Moon to another and from one Sabbath to another, all mankind will come and bow down before me," says the LORD. -Isaiah 66:22-23

We light the Sabbath candles in my home every Friday evening for a number of reasons, not the least of which is because my wife is Jewish. I have no problem seeing two overlapping meanings to Shabbat observance for Jews and for Gentiles, just like there is in my family, and in fact, it seems to be one of those commandments that has an overarching application to the entire human race.

Conclusion: What did Jesus teach about the Sabbath that Jewish and Gentile disciples are to obey?

1. The mechanics of Sabbath observance and the spirit of Sabbath observance are both important.
2. If you are in a situation where you must choose between mechanics and spirit, err on the side of the spirit and intent of Sabbath.
3. There are some jobs and activities that must be done, even on the Sabbath, yet anyone doing them is considered blameless of a violation of the Sabbath.
4. Helping a person on the Sabbath isn't wrong, even if they could have waited until the next day.

I'll add, even though Yeshua didn't teach this specifically, that the Sabbath can have a special meaning for the Jewish people in relation to their release from Egyptian slavery and still have a general meaning and application to everyone else.

This series will end with my next entry in which I'll try to summarize my all of my conclusions. Beyond that, there are a few ways I can go.

There have been a lot of comments on Judah Gabriel's blog post 7 Conclusions on Keeping God's Commandments, which was Judah's commentary on my blog entry What Did Jesus Teach About the Torah, Part 1. It would certainly be appropriate if I blogged on everyone's thoughts and tried to respond by "tightening up" my conclusions from that article.

I chose the book of Matthew for this series because it was the Gospel written specifically for a Jewish audience, so if any set of teachings could be said to be specifically Jewish, they would be found in Matthew's writings. Matthew is also the only Gospel writer that records "the Great Commission" which is the foundation of this series. Does that mean Yeshua didn't provide any fundamentally different or additionally illuminating teachings in Mark, Luke, and John? Exploring the other Gospels is an option.

All that said, it seems inevitable that I'll need to visit the Apostolic scriptures more specifically than I already have. While none of the apostles can override Yeshua's teachings, they can add dimension and expand the meaning of our understanding of what Yeshua taught. Also, the development of the early "church" and the record of how (or if) Gentile disciples were integrated into Jewish synagogue worship could help show us a picture, or at least a hint, of how (or if) Torah observance was managed by the Gentiles.

Next time: the conclusion of conclusions.