The Sabbath was made for man – 10 February 2010

Then he said to them, "The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath.

Mark 2:27

It is easy to feel bad about resting isn’t it?  We live in an increasingly busy world where work and activity are becoming the things that define us as successful people. It is then easy to feel uncomfortable about taking time out.  Even in a busy church where things need doing, it can be hard to work out which requests we should take up, and which bits we should leave.  We don’t want to let our Lord down; we don’t want to be lazy people, but  as Christians we know that God planned a day of rest for mankind each week, but how often do we ignore it and ‘power on’ through?

I want to offer a couple of thoughts…

1) The Sabbath was made for man.

When we hear this line we may miss the point of it.  We hear it at the end of Jesus’ discourse with the Pharisees about healing on the Sabbath.  We hear Jesus justifying healing on the Sabbath; but we miss him affirming that the Sabbath was made for man.  Jesus didn’t say that the Sabbath doesn’t matter.  He didn’t say that we can ignore it.  He did say that we should help each other on it, but he didn’t say abandon it.  The Sabbath rest, and we Christians take Sunday as our rest day, is a gift from God.  It is for us, his people.  It is a day of fellowship and community.  A day different from the others.  A day for resting in each others’ company, and building each other up.

2) Resting is an activity.

I like planes; I like old planes in particular.  Even sadder is the fact that I have a CD of the engines of an Avro Lancaster.  My wife is always so pleased when I play it loud enough to get the china rattling.  Anyway, here’s the point.  On the CD, the first attempt to start engine 3 fails.  It doesn’t catch and start; it just whines to a halt.  So what does the pilot do?  Does he just push the start button again and ‘ring its’ neck’ until it fires like an old car on a cold morning?  No.  He rests the engine for a minute. He knows that if he rests the engine, the unused fuel mixture will clear and there is a better chance of starting successfully next time.  Notice how resting the engine is an activity here.  The engine isn’t rested to waste time; it is rested to perform better next time the start button is pushed.  No we are not engines, but I think we can learn from this.  We need to stop seeing resting as a weakling’s activity.  Resting helps us to perform when we return to business.  The Sabbath was made for man.