The Sabbath Principle

“And ought not this woman, being a daughter of Abraham, whom Satan hath bound, lo, these eighteen years, be loosed from this bond on the Sabbath day?” Luke 13:16 [KJV].

Jesus was saying to them, you are telling me that because it is a Sabbath, this woman should not be loosed? Shouldn’t she being a daughter of Abraham be loosed? When you put systems before sympathy, you will miss God. When you put “this is how we do it” before the people God came to do it for, you will miss it. And this was the problem with the Jews. Who instituted the Sabbath? God. When you now put the Sabbath before the people, there obviously will be a problem. And Sabbath existed before the Law of Moses. Jesus was saying this woman who is a daughter of Abraham, should she not be loosed? Jesus was saying, Abraham is greater than Moses.

What am I saying? There are certain things that God has put in place that existed before the Law, existed throughout the Law, and exist after the Law. You should watch out for those things. But many times the Law makes us think in a box. It is either we want to be legalistic or we want to be antinomian. Legalism means staying with the Law and antinomianism means being lawless. There are some Christians that think being a Christian in the “New Testament” means being lawless. No!

You should watch out for the things that existed before the Law, existed throughout the Law, and exist after the Law. If we do not recognize that they existed before the Law, we may want to shred them with the Law. And doing that is doing yourself a disservice. There are a lot of examples of this in the Bible and one of them is the Sabbath. The Sabbath existed before the Law. God gave Sabbath to Adam but the Law instituted it. When Jesus came, He did not eradicate Sabbath.

Sabbath is still a principle, a principle of rest. If you ignore the principle of Sabbath [to rest your body], you are going to crash. It is not a prophecy; it is the truth. I have my Sabbath – a day I shut down and hallow it unto God. I sit with God and bask in His Presence. When people call me, I just look at the phone and say, God please answer this your child. Find a time of rest – that is the secret. You cannot ignore certain principles; they have existed before the Law.

Prayer: Lord, help me not to put systems before sympathy as I interact daily with people that You created the systems for, in Jesus Name.