John 5:16-17
16 And therefore did the Jews persecute Jesus, and sought to slay him, because he had done these things on the sabbath day.
17 But Jesus answered them, My Father worketh hitherto, and I work.
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Genesis 2:2
And on the seventh day God ended his work which he had made….
John 19:30
When Jesus therefore had received the vinegar, he said, It is finished….
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Genesis 2:2
…and he rested on the seventh day from all his work which he had made.
Mark 15:42, 46
42 And now when the even was come, because it was the preparation, that is, the day before the sabbath….
46 ….And he bought fine linen, and took him down, and wrapped him in the linen, and laid him in a sepulchre which was hewn out of a rock, and rolled a stone unto the door of the sepulchre.
Mind Renewers 
Thank you. I haven’t before seen the correlation between Jesus doing miracles (working) on the Sabbath, and the statement: “Hitherto” etc. I’d realised the implications of Jesus being laid in the tomb, and ‘it is finished’, but the full picture didn’t really come together.
So thanks 🙂
Thanks, W.R. I’m not sure we will ever in this life see the full picture! But our God has woven a master tapestry, in which threads interweave in ways that continually surprise and delight us!
May the Lord bless you as you worship Him in this glorious time of year!
Thanks 🙂 God bless you and yours
Very interesting!
Dear Pastor Gleason,
Hope you’re doing well, I’m sorry but I’m a bit slow, my foolish “Greek thinking” originally has me thinking probably a lot like most “Greek thinking” Christians, and that would be “oh look Jesus is saying that the law etc., is not for Christians?” or has done away with the law and the Sabbath etc.,? which I really don’t believe all of that, but then it’s a bit confusing at least to me, because of the whole law and grace issue, I realize e are saved by grace thru faith and not of ourselves,and I realize as The Word says the law is like a school teacher, to show us our need of the Savior, but then too, I realize it’s still in effect ? or is it not? or only certain parts? and then how do we pick and say oh well this one is still in effect or not, we are obviously not under the whole Mosaic law of stoning and such etc., for certain sins…
and then like Pastor Brandenburg has issue with the gender/whole clothing issue, to which I do agree that men should wear men’s clothing/women should wear women’s clothing etc., and this could become a problem because some might be offended or take issue with me for sounding almost chauvinistic if they’re not humble or saved? just where or how do we know which parts are still in effect like the Sabbath some will say like the cult of the Adventists that they have to keep the Sabbath, and some are very strict about this day etc., ??
what basically was Jesus trying to say to us or show us in His Jewish way as He was speaking to His people to make the point? at least on this point of the Sabbath, and years ago I’ve been thru worship with Assemblies of GOD folks and Messianic congregations who hold to different things that I probably wouldn’t agree with at all today, as I hold to a more Independent Baptist Local Church belief system like yourself and or Pastor Brandenburg does, or Thomas Ross, as we spoke of in email, and I believe in Scotland there are some very strict religious Sabbatarians etc., so I know you like to speak your mind on what you believe the Word says to be Biblical, which is why I respect you so much,
is the verse on rightly dividing the Word of GOD about these issues of the law and grace or is that my mistaken reading or adding into reading into ?
just wondering what is the right way to decipher His meaning in these passages of the Sabbath and law etc.,?
in the messianic view of things where I was going before, they said that Jesus is our Sabbath rest!! which sounds good or Biblical to me?
oh well, forgive my much hot air and rambling on here,
I do hope you’re well, thanks for taking time with the slower folks like myself haha, laughing at myself!! thanks for your great humble wisdom and for talking with us here on your excellent site of teaching for free!! when you should be getting paid for the work you’re providing all of us!! I do believe we are free from the law as born again believers, not boun to it but living in respect of it, and that it was the weight of the sin and the law that weighed us down and brought us to repentance to the Savior? thanks for your help, May The LORD bless you and yours with many, many, more years of fruitful service, with health love joy and peace, always in Jesus name amen! have a blessed day and week/weekend.
Well, John Mark, if I were to get into the whole question of the Law in any depth, we’d be stuck on this blog post for years to come! 🙂
So on that question, I’ll just say that Jesus fulfilled the Law in its entirety. And all of His righteousness is imputed (by grace through faith) to those who truly believe. And we need the full righteousness of the Law to be saved, but we are given that righteousness through Christ, who is the only One who ever fulfilled it perfectly. He said it was fitting for Him to “fulfil all righteousness” (that of the Law but also baptism and all other righteousness), and this He did on our behalf. He is our sabbath rest, He is our passover, He is our firstfruits, etc, etc.
But that is not really the point of this blog post. It is mostly a “stop and think about this” post in which I’m bringing some Scriptures together and encouraging my readers to think about them, rather than telling you HOW to think about them. But I’ll tell you a couple of thoughts that it brought to mind for me.
1. The absolute deity of Christ. God can work on the sabbath, or He can choose to rest on the sabbath. He did both. And so did Christ. You can’t make Jesus any less than Jehovah Himself, or He could not have treated the sabbath as He did.
2. The two great, overarching works of God in relation to man are Creation (by which He brought us into existence) and Salvation (by which He brought us back to life and to fellowship with Him). Both were brought to completion (God created man, Jesus said, “It is finished”), and both were followed by a rest on the sabbath.
Perhaps there’s more here to notice if you think about it. But I’m not going to do all the work for you on this post, YOU have to think about it. 🙂 All their lives, my kids have been hearing from me, “Stop being a lazy brain!” I’m not going to let my blog readers off easy!
Dear Pastor Jon,
Hope you’re doing great, thanks very much for your awesome wisdom in simplifying the matter and I do appreciate the lazy brains comment to be sure I need that just as much if not more than they do haha May The LORD bless you and yours with many years of fruitful service with health love joy and peace always in Jesus name amen, have a blessed day and week. Thanks for allowing my participation on your great site! ☺
John Mark,
Just to respond to the Sabbath issue, the main thing is that the Sabbath was not meant for anyone but the nation of Israel – the Jews.
You might find my article about this to be of value:
http://watchmansbagpipes.blogspot.com/2010/05/are-christians-required-to-keep-sabbath.html
Hi, Glenn, thanks for the link and the good article. But did you get your listing of the Ten Commandments from a Catholic source? You left out “Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven images…” (#2 in the Scripture) and had 9&10 debated as to where the covetousness command divides.
That’s what the Catholics do. #2 doesn’t fit with their practice, they have to drop it out, so they split “thou shalt not covet” into two commandments so they can make up the tenth. But where to split it is problematic because, of course, it is a single commandment. Covetousness is idolatry, whatever you are coveting, it is obviously one commandment.
A side point to your article (which is fine), but it surprised me, because I KNOW you aren’t Catholic. 🙂
Actually, I don’t remember where I got the list, but I know there is a lot of dispute as to numbering. I wasn’t so worried about the numbering as I was pointing out what the moral law is.
Right. I wasn’t worried about the numbering, either. As I said, it is a good article, and this is a side point. That’s why I commented on it here rather than there, I didn’t want to distract from the article for your readers. It just surprised me because I’ve only seen that numbering in a Catholic context, and I knew you wouldn’t be using that numbering for the same reason they use it.
Dear brother Chatfield,
Thanks for your help and kindness hope you’re doing great, May The LORD bless you with health love joy and peace always in Jesus name amen, have a blessed day and week
Oh, and I have #2 as part of #1,