Do you have to keep the Sabbath? In today’s Little Lesson, we’ll talk about Sabbath keeping. And Christians don’t agree on this.

Some, I think the minority, believe that it’s very, very important to keep the Sabbath. It’s one of the 10 Commandments for crying out loud! And it’s based on the fact that God rested Himself on the seventh day (see Genesis 2:1-3), something that pre-dates the law of Moses.

What the New Testament Says About the Sabbath

However, let’s be honest, you can’t find a whole lot in the epistles about the importance of keeping the Sabbath. And so we get this question. I get it fairly frequently. And I first of all remind folks that we are not under the law of Moses. And that’s where you find the Sabbath commandment.

Now that doesn’t mean we can ignore everything in the law of Moses. I have discussed this on a Little Lesson before, because many of the moral laws that you find in the law of Moses are also found in the law of Christ, of which all Christians are obligated to follow and to obey.

Adultery was a sin under the law of Moses, adultery is a sin under the law of Christ. When I say you don’t have to keep the law of Moses, I want to qualify that and say you do have to keep the parts of the law of Moses that were carried over into the law of Christ. But I can’t say definitively that the law of keeping the Sabbath is part of the law of Christ.

Asking the Wrong Question

Now that being said when people ask me, “Do I have to keep the Sabbath?” I often immediately say, “You’re asking the wrong question.” Do I have to keep the Sabbath? That’s like saying, “Do I have to eat ice cream?” Jesus said the Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath. And so it’s a gift from God, and primarily to have a day of rest.

Now, the Jewish Sabbath of course went from Friday sundown to Saturday sundown. So if you want to be very strict on that, you’ve got to reset your whole days. Christians often refer to Sunday as the Sabbath. Which of course it is not technically the Sabbath, but that’s what it’s been known to be called.

But the point is a day of rest. And I think scientific studies have shown that people that try to ignore that concept of having one day out of seven for a rest are eventually not nearly as productive as they would be if they had that rest.

The Value of a Sabbath Rest

Because you get that rest and then you get rejuvenated and you get ready to hit it again on Monday morning. When you think about it, we’ve got 365 and one-fourth days a year based upon the sun and moon. That’s how we devised our calendar and so forth. That all could have been divided up in a lot of ways.

Could have been you work 10 days then you get a day off. That could be a week. But the days take 24 hours and people work as many as they can. But they have to sleep. That’s another gift from the LORD when we get to rest. And it’s just built in to every culture around the world.

It’s so interesting, it’s like a natural law that God has built into our bodies. And so people practice it who don’t have any exposure at all to Judaism or to Christianity where these things we know that God had something to say about that.

You Get to Keep the Sabbath

Okay, so it’s not, do you have to keep the Sabbath? It’s, you get to keep the Sabbath. I personally am not one who says, “Oh, you’ve got to start sundown Friday and go to sundown Saturday.” I’m not one to say that if you mess up and you have to work or something that you’re going to go to hell.

But I am saying, thank God that He has given this wonderful gift to us, and so make sure you get a day of rest and relaxation. And if on top of that you can add something spiritual like some special time in the Word or with the LORD or serving somebody, that makes it even more of a blessing.

As long as you’re not doing the thing that you normally do your five or six other days of the week. There’s even, in my thoughts, and again you may disagree with me, but in my thoughts there are some forms of work that I could on the Sabbath that are so easy and so enjoyable that to me it’s really not work at all. It’s really just relaxation and playing as it were. But yet I’m actually accomplishing something and getting something done.

You Are Not Under the Law of Moses

Okay? So I hope I answered the question as best I can. You are not under the law of Moses. You’re under the law of Christ. And so read through the gospels. Anything Jesus said that His disciples should be doing you should be doing.

And now again the real strict Sabbath keepers will always say, “Well, Jesus kept the Sabbath.” Well, of course Jesus kept the Sabbath! He was ministering under the law of Moses.

So He started at sundown Friday and finished it on sundown Saturday. Sure He did. But can you find a verse in the gospels or can you find verses or a verse in the New Testament epistles that says, “Make sure you’re keeping the Sabbath as it is described in the law of Moses?” No you can’t.

Loving Those You Disagree With

“ As Christians, we need to honor, love and support each other.

All right. And I’ll say in closing, Sabbath keepers and non-Sabbath keepers (or less strict Sabbath keepers), whoever you are, the important thing is that we love each other.

And when people fight over these kinds of things it is a sad, sad commentary on our real spirituality. Okay? We need to honor each other, love each other, support each other and respect the convictions that others have that maybe we don’t share.

Because everyone’s trying to please the LORD as best as they understand what He wants of them. Okay? Thanks for joining me on this Little Lesson. God bless you.

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Did Jesus Christ upgrade the Law of Moses? We’ve been asking that question on the previous two Little Lessons. We’re going to ask it one more time today. I can’t review too much, but the law to love your neighbor as yourself is an Old and New Covenant Law, and it’s the highest moral law that relates to how we treat each other.

We find that in Jesus’ “You have heard it was said, but I say to you” statements, He doesn’t always accurately cite the Old Covenant Law as people claim. He often quotes the Pharisees and their twisted teaching that’s based on the Law of Moses.

Jesus Was Correcting the Pharisees, Not the Old Testament

Jesus in all of the so-called corrections that He gives is actually correcting the false teaching of the Pharisees. Why would He ever correct the Law of Moses? Why would He ever contradict the Law of Moses? Think about that for a second.

The scribes and Pharisees were often testing Jesus to see if He would endorse the Law of Moses. They decided, and rightfully so, that if He doesn’t endorse the Law of Moses— if He contradicts the Law of Moses—He can’t possibly be from God. He can’t be the Messiah.

So Jesus, right at the offset at the Sermon on the Mount, says “Don’t think I came to abolish the Law or the Prophets. I didn’t come to abolish them. Oh my Goodness, I gave the Law! I inspired the Prophets! That’s Me speaking through people in the Old Covenant. I didn’t come to abolish that. I came to fulfill everything in the law and the Prophets. Not just to fulfill the Messianic Prophecies, no. But to fill to the full people’s understanding of the moral and ethical principles, to rightly divide the Word of God.” Because the scribes and Pharisees had so twisted the Word of God.

Raising the Standard Back to Where it Was Meant to Be All Along

It’s so obvious in the Sermon on the Mount that Jesus is correcting the teaching of the Scribes and Pharisees. The whole section that has all those “You have heard it was said, but I say to you” phrases in Matthew 5 all being in Verse 20, where Jesus says,

For I say to you that unless your righteousness surpasses that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will not enter the kingdom of heaven.

So naturally people are thinking, “Oh my goodness, Jesus just said that all of our spiritual teachers are going to Hell, and if we don’t do better than them, we’re going to go to Hell as well.”

The Pharisees’ Perverted Teachings

So then Jesus begins to specifically talk about where they’ve got to do better than the scribes and Pharisees.

It’s so obvious that at times He is not citing Moses’s teaching under the Old Covenant. He’s citing the Pharisees perverted teaching.

In one of the cases He said, “You have heard it was said whoever divorces his wife let him give her a certificate of dismissal” (see Matthew 5:33).

Now is that honestly what the Law of Moses taught? Whoever divorces his wife, make sure you give her that certificate? Are you kidding me? No! The idea of the certificate for divorce is found kind of as an incidental thing in part of the law in Deuteronomy 4, in the first four verses. You can read it for yourself, but that’s not the emphasis at all.

The Pharisees’ Easy Divorce System

But that was the emphasis of the scribes and the Pharisees. And it’s very plain that the scribes and Pharisees believed that it was lawful to divorce your wife for any cause at all. That’s in the Bible. Read Matthew 19.

They came to Jesus and asked him that question. Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife for any cause at all? Because that’s what they believed, and if you study Jewish history at the time, that’s what was being taught by the scribes and Pharisees.

They had a whole list of things for which it was lawful to divorce your wife, and it was anything. If your wife spoke to another man in public, you can divorce her. If a man saw a woman who was more attractive to him than his wife, he could divorce her lawfully because that made her “indecent” in his eyes, and Moses did talk about a man finding an indecency in his wife and divorcing her.

So that’s where the Pharisees were coming from. Divorce your wife for any cause. Easy divorce. Such a lax policy on divorce. You don’t even find that with unsaved people in the world anywhere! But in Jesus’s time, that was the mentality amongst the spiritual leaders of Israel. And so Jesus said, “You guys and your easy divorce thing. Whoever divorces their wife, just give her a certificate. Divorce for any cause. No way!”

Read Matthew 19 and see how Jesus corrects that. He says God never intended anyone to get divorced. It’s never been that way from the beginning. The only legitimate reason to get divorced is because of immorality, etc. And so in the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus says basically that same thing. You divorce your wife for any cause other than immorality, you’re committing adultery. Boy, and he was jabbing it right to them because these guys did believe that adultery was wrong.

The Pharisees’ Twisting of the Law of Moses

It was the Pharisees that brought the woman caught in the act of adultery before Jesus and said, “the law says we ought to stone such a woman” (see John 8:1-11). So they all knew and preached and believed that adultery was wrong, and condemned people who committed adultery.

Yet, they would divorce their wives for any reason, and Jesus said that’s no different than divorce. So He’s correcting them on that, and He even goes deeper and says, “If you look to a woman to lust for her, you’re committing adultery already in your heart.”

Was that a new standard? Are you kidding me? In the Ten Commandments it says, “Do not covet your neighbor’s wife.” Why do men covet their neighbors’ wives? Is it because of their cooking ability? We’re talking about lust there.

Job, in perhaps the oldest book in the Bible, knew that lust was wrong. He said in Job 31:1, “I Have made a covenant with my eyes; how then could I gaze at a virgin?”

Because everyone’s always known in their conscience that it’s wrong to be mentally undressing a woman who’s not your wife, lusting after her. Everyone’s always known that’s wrong. That’s not a new standard. For us to say that Jesus was introducing new standards in the Sermon on the Mount, you’d have to say that lust wasn’t wrong under the Old Covenant. That’s crazy!

Correcting Misinterpretations of the Law of Moses

Jesus was correcting the Scribes and the Pharisees. He said, in Matthew 5:33-37:

Again, you have heard that the ancients were told, ‘You shall not make false vows, but shall fulfill your vows to the Lord.’ But I say to you, make no oath at all, either by heaven, for it is the throne of God, or by the earth, for it is the footstool of His feet, or by Jerusalem, for it is the city of the great King. Nor shall you make an oath by your head, for you cannot make one hair white or black. But let your statement be, ‘Yes, yes’ or ‘No, no’; anything beyond these is of evil.

So, is this something new? Is telling the truth and letting your ‘yes’ be ‘yes’, and your ‘no’ be ‘no’, some kind of a new moral under the Old Covenant? Was God okay with people not telling the truth under the Old Covenant?

If you read Matthew Chapter 23:16, you will see a whole list of things that Jesus rebuked the Pharisees and scribes for because of this incredible concoction that they had come up with, stipulating when you had to tell the truth and when it was okay to lie.

Whoever swears by the Temple, you don’t have to keep your vow then, but if you swear by the gold in the Temple, then you have to keep your vow. That’s what the Pharisees and Scribes were teaching. Jesus corrected that. He rebuked them in Matthew 23. It’s the same thing here.

At the very end of the Sermon of the Mount, they were amazed, the Bible says, that He was not teaching as their scribes and Pharisees, because He was contradicting their twisted teaching.

Okay, we’re out of time. I’m sorry for this amount of time that we’ve had. I don’t want to go more than three times on Little Lessons, but you can look into my teaching on the Sermon on the Mount, where I go into this in much greater detail. All right? Thanks for joining me for today’s Little Lesson. God bless you!

The post Did Jesus Upgrade the Law of Moses Morally? Part 3 appeared first on David Servant.

Did Jesus upgrade the Law of Moses morally? This is the same question we asked in our previous little lesson, and we’re going to elaborate a little bit more on it in this lesson. If you didn’t watch the first part, you might want to back up and watch that part first.

We talked last time about the fact that the second greatest commandment (see Mark 12:28-34) is a standard that is an Old Covenant and a New Covenant standard. It’s brought forth by Paul and James in their epistles as the highest standard to live by. They fully endorsed that loving your neighbor as yourself is the standard which we all ought to be living by. James said whoever does that does well (James 2:8)

Did Jesus Morally Upgrade the Law of Moses in the Sermon on the Mount?

So we’re wondering, where do people get the idea that Jesus upgraded the Law of Moses? That generally comes from their interpretation of the Sermon on the Mount where Jesus about six times said, “You have heard it was said,” and then He says, “but I say to you.” We would expect that if Jesus was upgrading the Law of Moses in those cases that, first of all, He would correctly cite the Law of Moses. He does on a couple of occasions, but out of the six times most times He doesn’t correctly cite it.

For example, He said, “You have heard it said love your neighbor and hate your enemy” (Matthew 5:43). Well, where is that? In fact, if you have a Bible that puts Old Testament references in all upper case, you’ll see that the first part of that statement is in upper case, where Jesus said, “You have heard it was said love your neighbor.” That’s in all caps. “And you shall hate your enemy,” that’s not in all caps because that’s not to be found in the Old Testament. That’s not in the Law of Moses. God never said to hate your enemy.

So Jesus is not correctly citing the Mosaic Law when He says that, and there are other cases as well.

What God Commanded All Along

Also, you’d expect not only that Jesus would correctly cite the Old Covenant standard, but that His upgrade would actually be an upgrade. That in fact the new standard He gives, you wouldn’t be able to find it under the Law of Moses, because it’s a new upgraded standard. But yet you can. In every case you can.

Jesus said,

You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I say to you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you. – Matthew 5:33-34

If Jesus was upgrading the Law of Moses, you would think, well, obviously then that upgrade can’t be found in the Old Covenant. That’s a new standard that’s never been heard before. But au contraire monsieur, that is an Old Covenant standard!

Should we love our enemies under the Old Covenant? Well, apparently God thought so, because in Exodus 23:4 God says, in the Law of Moses, “If you meet your enemy’s ox or his donkey wandering away, you shall surely return it to him.”

Well, that doesn’t sound like hating your enemies! That sounds like loving your enemies. An Old Testament, Old Covenant, Mosaic Law standard. Not brand new under the New Covenant.

And then God elaborates in Exodus 23:5,

If you see the donkey of one who hates you [that’s your enemy] lying helpless under its load, you shall refrain from leaving it to him, you shall surely release it with him.

Help your enemy. There’s his donkey lying there. It can’t get up under its load. You’re not to ignore that. You’re to go over there and help release that load from that donkey with your enemy. Help him. Serve him. Go the extra mile. Turn the other cheek. Ah! An Old Covenant standard.

Turning the Other Cheek in the Old Covenant

Here’s one for you. Leviticus 19:17-18:

You shall not hate your fellow countryman in your heart; you may surely reprove your neighbor, but shall not incur sin because of him. You shall not take vengeance, nor bear any grudge against the sons of your people, but you shall love your neighbor as yourself; I am the Lord.

How about that? So much for the idea that loving your neighbor, or even loving your enemy, is just a New Covenant standard.

An Old Testament Standard that Paul Quoted

Well, here’s one more. This is in the Old Testament. It’s not in the Law of Moses but it’s certainly contained within the body of literature from the Old testament and worthy of quoting in the New Testament as binding upon Christians.

Are you ready for this one? Proverbs Chapter 25:21:

If your enemy is hungry, give him food to eat; And if he is thirsty, give him water to drink.

Who’s that? Your enemy. Your enemy! That sounds like even more than turning the other cheek. Oh my goodness, your enemy is hungry and thirsty, and you’re feeding him or her and giving him or her something to drink. And why? God says in Proverbs 25:22:

For you will heap burning coals on his head, and the Lord will reward you.

It’s interesting that the Apostle Paul quotes these verses from Proverbs as being binding upon New Covenant Christians.

Romans 12:19-20:

Never take your own revenge, beloved, but leave room for the wrath of God, for it is written, “Vengeance is Mine, I will repay,” says the Lord. “But if your enemy is hungry, feed him, and if he is thirsty, give him a drink; for in so doing you will heap burning coals on his head.”

So you can see that the Apostle Paul believed that the Old Covenant standard was still the New Covenant ethic. You can find the New Covenant ethic in the Old Covenant, in the Law of Moses.

“ You can find the New Covenant ethic in the Old Covenant. —DAVID SERVANT

Jesus Did Not Introduce a Higher Standard

So can you see this now? People say things like “Jesus gave a brand new standard in the Sermon on the Mount, something that no one had ever heard before and it’s a higher standard.” “The whole Old Testament is irrelevant! We don’t even have to look at the Mosaic Law because we have a higher standard now.” That’s erroneous teaching.

On our next Little Lesson, I’m going to drive this point home even further as we look at a couple more of the “You have heard, but I say to you” statements by the Lord Jesus Christ in the Sermon on the Mount. Okay? Thanks for joining me. Thanks for being so humble to receive this teaching! God bless you.

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This is a great question we have today: “Are Christians obligated to keep the Law of Moses?” The answer to that question is, yes and no. I’m going to explain what I mean by that in the next few minutes.

There’s three, and only three, codified laws that God has ever given to groups of people upon this Earth, and the very first one we could refer to as, “The Law of Conscience.” That is, God has given every human being a conscience that tells them when they’re doing right or wrong. The basic Law of Conscience is to treat other people like you want to be treated. That’s what we call the Golden Rule.

The Law of Conscience also incorporates the commandment, “Thou shalt not steal.” This is one of the 10 Commandments under the Mosaic Law, but it’s also in the Law of Conscience. Everyone who has ever lived has known it’s wrong to steal, because you’re not treating other people like you want to be treated.

Everyone who’s ever lived has known it’s wrong to lie. When they tell a lie, something in their heart says, “Oh no, you ought not to be telling that lie, because you don’t like it when people lie to you. You’re not treating them like you want to be treated.”

Everybody who has ever lived has known it’s wrong to murder another person, because that’s not how they want to be treated. They don’t want to be murdered. Everyone has always known it’s wrong to commit adultery, because that’s not how they want their spouse to be treated, or their future spouse to be treated. Something in their hearts says “This is a very sacred thing between a husband and a wife, and it should be preserved,” okay?

That’s the Law of Conscience. Paul talks about the Law of Conscience in his defense of the gospel, in his epistle to the Romans. Early on, in Chapter 2, he makes reference to that Law of Conscience. Let’s read through that reference in Romans 2:14 together.

Paul says, “For when Gentiles who do not have the Law…” obviously speaking about the Law of Moses, “do instinctively the things of the Law…” Now, no gentiles are doing instinctively the ceremonial things of the law, they’re doing instinctively the moral things of the law.

Paul says that when these Gentiles instinctively do the things of the law, “not having the Law, are a law to themselves.” So they do have a law, “in that they show the work of the Law written in their hearts, their conscience bearing witness and their thoughts alternately accusing or else defending them” (Romans 2:15).

This is often described as a little angel on one shoulder and a little demon on the other shoulder. There’s a conflict going on in the heart. It’s the conscience that God gave every single person. They’ll have to give an account one day, because He gave them this Law of Conscience. He expects them to abide by it. Of course, everybody transgressed that law, and thank God for Jesus. He makes a way for us to be forgiven of our sins, and to begin obeying that Law of Conscience.

All right. Now, the second codified law, the second set of laws that God has ever given out of a total of three, is called the Law of Moses. It’s not a singular law, it’s all the laws that God gave through Moses. I think about 613 of them. Guess what? Within the Law of Moses is also included the Law of Conscience.

Sure, even in the 10 Commandments you see basic moral requirements: don’t murder, don’t steal, don’t lie, don’t commit adultery. These are basic, basic moral things, all in the Law of Conscience, but also of course, included in the Law of Moses. I the Law of Moses were a lot of things that had nothing to do with morality. They were ceremonial things. They had Levitical priesthoods, and there are all kinds of regulations there.

They were a political nation, so there was civil law included within the Law of Moses. A whole, whole lot of stuff. God only gave that law to a very limited number of people. Guess who? The descendants of Israel after God delivered them out of Egyptian bondage.

He only gave it to those limited number of people for a limited amount of time, until the promised Messiah should come. When Jesus died on the cross for the sins of the world, and the curtain in the temple was ripped in half, that was essentially the end of the Old Covenant, even though people continued to keep it, because of their lack of knowledge.

All right. That’s the Law of Moses. Then finally, the only other law—sets of laws—that God ever gave to humanity would be the Law of Christ. Paul speaks about the Law of Christ in various places in his epistles, and it’s not a single law. It’s everything that Christ commanded.

In fact, remember He said this, “Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I commanded you” (Matthew 28:19-20). Of course, if you read through the gospels, you’ll see that a lot of what Christ commanded them is basic moral stuff that you find in the Law of Moses. And of course, also in the Law of Conscience.

In the Sermon on the Mount, He straightened out a lot of twisted teachings from the Pharisees and Scribes regarding those basic, basic moral principles of just telling the truth, not committing adultery, not stealing and so forth. All right?

That’s the Law of Christ. That was given to anyone who decides to follow Christ, and it begins with baptism. The first thing to do is to get baptized; that’s what Christ said to do. Then following Him, obeying His commandments, as they’re outlined by Christ. You can search for a lot of the laws that Moses gave in the gospels, and you won’t find them, because they’re not in the Law of Christ.

You can look for them also in the epistles, written by the apostles, and you won’t find many of those laws of Moses, but you will find the laws of Christ. Of course, you will find the moral, ethical laws of Moses. That’s why sometimes the apostles in the epistles quote from the 10 Commandments, or they quote, “Love your neighbor as yourself.” That’s an Old Covenant law, the Law of Moses, but it’s included in the New Covenant under the Law of Christ.

Now, I can prove all this by just showing you three verses from 1 Corinthians 9. This is Paul writing to the Corinthians about his evangelistic strategies, and he said in verse 19, “For though I am free from all men, I have made myself a slave to all, so that I may win more.”

Now, he talks about a specific strategy to reach the Jews. “To the Jews …” Now, he was a Jew, but he said, “To the Jews I became as a Jew.” What does he mean? He means “I kept all the Law of Moses when hanging around the Jews.” He said it another way in the very next phrase here. “To those who are under the Law …” that’s the Law of Moses, “As under the Law.” Obviously under the law of Moses. But then look what he says next. “though not being myself under the Law.”

“See, I’m a Jew, but I’m not under the Law of Moses, because I’m in Christ now.” Okay? The reason he did this, the reason he kept the Law of Moses when he was hanging around the Jews, is so that, “so that I might win those who are under the Law.” That’s why you see Paul doing certain things in the Book of Acts that are obviously oriented around the Mosaic law. He’s just trying not to offend the Jews that he’s trying to win.

Some people take those instances as proof to say, “Oh, Paul kept the Law of Moses.” Now you’re reading why he kept the Law of Moses sometimes, because now in Verse number 21, he said, “to those who are without law…” (that would have to be the Gentiles), I act “as without law.”

See, “I’m not going to be keeping the Law of Moses around the Gentiles, because that would be a hindrance to them, because they think, ‘Boy, is that what a Christian looks like? A guy who keeps all his ceremonial stuff and all his ritualistic stuff? I don’t want to do that.'” So Paul strips all that stuff away when he’s hanging around the Gentiles.

Listen what he says now, “though not being without the law of God but under the law of Christ.” There you have it. Paul, a Jew, believed he was not under the Law of Moses, he was under the Law of Christ. Are you obligated to keep the Law of Moses? No, only keep the Law of Christ, but in keeping the Law of Christ, you will keep the moral and ethical laws of Moses, and you will keep, of course, the Law of Conscience. Thanks so much for asking this great question! God bless you.

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