The Lord of the Sabbath

Matthew 12:8, John 19:30

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(This is part one of a four part series. The rest of the parts will be collected on our Lord of the Sabbath page after they are posted.)

One of my favorite titles for Jesus is when he calls himself the Lord of the Sabbath. (Matthew 12:8) And over the next few weeks, I want to unpack with you what that title means. Sabbath means sacred rest, and the very first time we see it in Scripture is in the creation account. God creates the heavens, the earth, and all things in six normal natural days, and after he creates everything, he sees it. All of his work is done and completed. It’s finished and there’s nothing left to do. And so he rests on the seventh day, and he makes that day holy.

Whenever I think of the creation account, boy, I think about all of my home projects that I’m doing. I’ve got this thing where I’ll do a project but it’s never quite completely done. It’s never completely finished. I’m a tweaker. I’ll always keep continuing to tweak and mess and edit for eternity. Or sometimes even when I think I have a project finished, I might look back over that and always see those 1 or 2 flaws, those 1 or 2 things I wish I had done just a little bit differently. And I have OCD, so it really, really bothers me.

But you see, those unfinished, uncompleted projects are kind of a picture of our creation after the fall into sin. It means nothing is ever going to be finished perfectly. Nothing is ever going to just stay done or stay fixed. And most importantly, the thing that isn’t going to be done or especially done right is keeping God’s law perfect. That’s the project, that’s the work that I always fall short of completing. I always leave something undone, something unsaid.

Or maybe after the fact it’s when I’m laying awake in my bed at night, not able to sleep because I’m wishing and wishing I hadn’t have said that dumb thing. And I’m wishing that I could go back and do things differently. Well, Jesus is the Lord of the Sabbath. He’s the Lord of getting a job done once and doing it right. And when he does it, it stays done forever. He came back into this creation as the second Adam, the second Adam, to complete our perfect righteousness when we could never do that job right. He came as the creator in order to begin a new creation, a second creation.

You see, he labored for six days, and that six days of labor culminated with his death on the cross. And as he hung on the cross, what did Jesus say? He says “it is finished.” (John 19:30) It is done. It is completed. There is nothing left to do. Nothing left for you or me to do. And in that perfect job, that job done well, Jesus rested on the Sabbath day.

God the father showed that he approved of Jesus work by raising Jesus up from the dead. And with Jesus resurrection, we have the promise of a new creation, you and me. We get to be partakers in that new creation. In Holy Baptism, God is connected you to Jesus completed work on the cross and his resurrection. That means we’re looking forward to a new world, a better world, a second creation where we don’t have to worry about jobs that don’t get done anymore. We get to look forward to perfect rest. Amen.