Mark 2:28 Commentary and Bible Study

The sabbath principle goes on. Of course, the chief thing now is the death and resurrection of Christ. That's why we believe that the Holy Spirit inspired the apostles to move the Christian sabbath to the first day of the week. That's why the appearances of the Lord, the resurrection appearances, initially took place on the Lord's Day, the first day of the week. You read it in the Gospels: the resurrection, the first day of the week. The following week, the Lord appears again on the first day of the week. The precedent was set by the Lord when he met with his disciples. So very soon you find it in the New Testament: they are gathering together on the first day of the week. When the apostle Paul goes to Troas in the book of Acts, the churches gather together to break bread, as was their custom on the first day of the week. The apostle writes to the churches of Galatia and he says that all the churches in the Roman province of Galatia gathered together on the first day of the week. When the apostle John is on the Isle of Patmos, the very last book of the Bible, he says, ‘I was in the Spirit on the Lord's Day.’ What he is quoting – ‘I was in the Spirit on the Lord's Day’? He is quoting Mark 2:28: ‘Therefore, the Son of Man is Lord also of the sabbath.’ The Lord's Day – that's where it comes from, the day of the resurrection of the Lord. The Lord's Day continues to remember creation, and it continues to remember that the principle of rest teaches grace. The day that we gather for encouragement and instruction from the word, for worship, and for meeting with God, is a day when our works are laid down. It's a picture that salvation is by grace and not by works. It's a picture of the eternal rest which we enter into at death. It is intentionally awkward. In the Old Testaments the surrounding nations looked on at Israel, and they were baffled. These people stop everything on the seventh day. Why? All their farming methods, everything they do, had to be organised for this one-day stoppage, every week. Everything revolved around it. Everything had to be organised to provide for that day. It was such an important day to them: the day that they worshipped their God, the day when they stopped. What a witness it was to the nations around! What is different about those Jews? What is special? They stop. Actually, as the centuries went by, half the pagan world began to copy them. It was a good idea to have a stoppage day, a day of rest. But the witness of the day was powerful. Christ’s logic is impeccable. Because the Sabbath was made for man – to teach him, to help him to worship God, to honour his Creator – and because Christ is the Son of Man, then he is also the Lord of the Sabbath. How so? Because the Son of Man is the Lord of all mankind, the man who overcomes the prince of darkness on behalf of all his people, and the man who rules over his people, the man in whom man’s destiny is guaranteed and fulfilled. His name is above every name, and he has the right to say how the Sabbath should be observed, and he has the right to say how it should apply to his people. He too is using the Sabbath for man, for the good of man, the good of his disciples. How dare the Pharisees come between Christ and his people, or try to impose their man-made laws on his disciples. Christ had not been unaware of what his disciples were doing in plucking the ears of corn. The Pharisees found fault with him for not correcting his disciples according to their legalistic interpretation of the law, but the Lord of the Sabbath knew that what they did was acceptable and allowed by him on his day, the day when he says what can and cannot be done.