Sabbath Healing for the Whole Man

One final look at the Sabbath. There are people in the assembly, the church, the synagogue in need of healing. Who among us is completely whole and without any brokenness all the time? Jesus never layered an expectation of perfection upon people who gathered to worship. They could come just as they are and learn the Simple Truth that a Sabbath blesses the whole man.

Do you know it when you observe a Sabbath as the healing for your mind, your heart, your spirit, and your body?

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Matthew 12:9 Going on from that place, he went into their synagogue, 10 and a man with a shriveled hand was there.

(All kinds of people show up at institutions of worship for all kinds of reasons. Some need healing. Some are there for reputation and appearances, putting on a mask of a cleaned up life made for TV or public consumption. But doesn’t putting on an act speak of a deeper brokenness and worse, a prideful unwillingness to accept that they too are broken?)

Matthew 12:10b Looking for a reason to accuse Jesus, the Pharisees asked him, “Is it lawful to heal on the Sabbath?” 11 Jesus said to them, “If any of you has a sheep and it falls into a pit on the Sabbath, will you not take hold of it and lift it out? 12 How much more valuable is a man than a sheep! Therefore it is lawful to do good on the Sabbath.”

More than just verbally teaching about the Sabbath, Jesus gave an object lesson that drove a veritable wedge to display that He means what He says about the Sabbath. Is the Sabbath a day for legal bean counting of personal righteousness … or is it a set-aside from the daily grind to acknowledge God in our midst–a wonderful, benevolent, all powerful, almighty God whose love is so great He cares about the big and little things of our lives? Matthew 11:28 “Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest.” That’s the Sabbath. We can humbly lay it all at His feet.

Matthew 12:13 Then he said to the man, “Stretch out your hand.” So he stretched it out and it was completely restored, just as sound as the other. 14 But the Pharisees went out and plotted how they might kill Jesus.

It’s sad that the Pharisees preferred their legalistic view of Sabbath adherence to a different kind of Sabbath meant for the health and benefit of the whole man: body, soul, and spirit.