6/27/21 - 5th Sunday after Pentecost - Worship Gives Real Rest - Colossians 2:13-17

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Announcements for the week - http://www.mzluth.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/weekly-announcement-June-27-2021.pdf

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The Pentecost Season
The Sundays after Pentecost focus on how Christians live in response to all that God has done for us. This part of the Church Year begins with a 6 week focus on Faith.

This Sunday
In his kingdom we are to live according to his will as expressed in the law. But even in the directions given for our lives in the law, we see Christ for us. For the law does not benefit God; it benefits us. The Third Commandment is a pre-eminent example of the point.

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First Lesson: 1 Samuel 21:1-6
The Sabbath was made for man, not man or the Sabbath. God’s command was to be a blessing for people. They were to focus on God and his promises of a Savior to come. God never intended man to be saved by keeping the Law. The Law was put in place to show us our need for Jesus. The Sabbath law as practiced by humans, was set aside to serve David and his men.


Second Lesson: Colossians 2:13-17
The Old Testament Sabbath and ceremonial law had become a burden because of the pharisaical perversion of it. The Pharisees focused on the shell and missed its content. Ideally its provisions all point to Christ’s winning the real Sabbath rest for us by his refusal to rest until our salvation had been won. Now the law has been removed as a burden by its fulfillment in the work of Christ. Thus now we are free to receive what the works of the law could never give: we receive Christ; we receive life; we receive forgiveness for all our sins against all of the law! That’s the whole point and purpose of our worship, to receive what God has come to give us in his Word. Therefore, let us not despise preaching and his Word but gladly hear and learn it, and thus receive its saving benefit: Christ!


Gospel: Mark 2:23-28
The Pharisees had turned even rest into a work! Jesus declares the true intent of the Sabbath law (the word Sabbath means rest). It was God’s gift, not for God’s benefit, but for our benefit. Its true and lasting rest is found in Christ and in his work; thus the worship of the New Testament is chiefly a worship not of doing but of receiving what God has done for us in his Word and sacraments. Even the Old Testament ceremonial law had the gift of the Sabbath as its corner stone and connecting thread; thus even details of the ceremonial law could be violated in the interests of the blessings God wanted to give to man through the law. The priest gave and David received what otherwise would have been unlawful so that David and his men could carry out the expressed will of God that David should live and eventually become king. God gives the law for our benefit; our obedience to it benefits us and our neighbor, not God. The chief benefit of the rest day for us is the opportunity it affords the Holy Spirit to work faith in us by the preaching of his Word; the Third Commandment has a law shell and a gospel content.

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