THE 2ND SUNDAY AFTER PENTECOST AD 2024
TRINITY EVANGELICAL LUTHERAN CHURCH
KURTZVILLE, ONTARIO
REV. KURT E. REINHARDT
Deuteronomy 5:12-15
“‘Observe the Sabbath day, to keep it holy, as the LORD your God commanded you. Six days
you shall labor and do all your work, but the seventh day is a Sabbath to the LORD your God.
On it you shall not do any work, you or your son or your daughter or your male servant or your
female servant, or your ox or your donkey or any of your livestock, or the sojourner who is
within your gates, that your male servant and your female servant may rest as well as you. You
shall remember that you were a slave in the land of Egypt, and the LORD your God brought you
out from there with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm. Therefore the LORD your God
commanded you to keep the Sabbath day.
2 Corinthians 4:5-12
For what we proclaim is not ourselves, but Jesus Christ as Lord, with ourselves as your servants
for Jesus' sake. For God, who said, “Let light shine out of darkness,” has shone in our hearts to
give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.
Treasure in Jars of Clay
But we have this treasure in jars of clay, to show that the surpassing power belongs to God and
not to us. We are afflicted in every way, but not crushed; perplexed, but not driven to despair;
persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed; always carrying in the body the
death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be manifested in our bodies. For we who live are
always being given over to death for Jesus' sake, so that the life of Jesus also may be manifested
in our mortal flesh. So death is at work in us, but life in you.
Mark 2:23-28
One Sabbath he was going through the grainfields, and as they made their way, his disciples
began to pluck heads of grain. And the Pharisees were saying to him, “Look, why are they doing
what is not lawful on the Sabbath?” And he said to them, “Have you never read what David did,
when he was in need and was hungry, he and those who were with him: how he entered the
house of God, in the time of Abiathar the high priest, and ate the bread of the Presence, which it
is not lawful for any but the priests to eat, and also gave it to those who were with him?” And he
said to them, “The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath. So the Son of Man is
lord even of the Sabbath.”

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Six days you shall labour and do all your work, but the seventh is a Sabbath to the Lord your
God. The Sabbath was a big deal to God, such a big deal that He Himself who as God Almighty
needs no rest, rested on the seventh day of creation. He took six days to create the world when
he could have done it all in and instant and then rested from all His labours on the seventh day to
set a pattern and cycle for creation and for our lives.
God rests because resting is essential to our lives, which is why every night we lay our heads
down on our pillows, turn out the lights and close our eyes. With a good night’s sleep you can
face just about anything in your day and get through it, but after a sleepless night the smallest
mole hill along the way can feel like Mount Everest. Deprive some of sleep long enough and
they’ll do just about anything, tell you just about anything, admit to just about anything to be
able to close their eyes. We have to rest to live, without it we become dead tired and eventually
can even be worked to death. Rest is not only essential for a healthy and happy life it is essential
to life itself.
Even before the fall into sin, we needed to rest, it was simply a part of how we were made, how
we were created to be. Even before the fall into sin we got tired and needed to rest because we
were not God. Even before the fall into sin, we needed to close our eyes and rest each night
because we were not almighty. We were God’s beautiful faultless creation but we were only
creatures. We did not hold the world together and keep it turning all the time, everything didn’t
depend on us and so each night we could lay our heads down and leave everything up to God as
every seven days we could rest from all our labours and leave everything in His very capable
hands.
What changed with the fall into sin was not that we grew tired and needed to rest, but being
deceived into believing that we were our own gods we came to believe that we were or should be
almighty and so didn’t need to rest. It was only after the fall into sin that we started thinking that
we had to hold the world together and keep it spinning, that everything depended on us and that
we had to keep it all going. It was only after the fall into sin that we started believing that God
wasn’t up to His job, and that we couldn’t stop for a moment and leave everything in His very
capable hands. It was only after the Fall into sin that we started believing that He couldn’t get by
without us.
It was only after Adam and Eve took and ate so that they could be like God that we took the
weight of the world on our shoulders and started working ourselves to death. It was only after
the fall into sin that we started tossing and turning through the night, while our minds raced
through countless worries and cares or went over the same problem over and over again night
after night. No, before the fall into sin the wheels didn’t keep on turning or spinning through the
night, neither did worries haunt us all throughout the day. Before the fall into sin we could let
things go without picking them right back up again. No, we didn’t stew on them or chew on
them like a cow with its cud, because before the fall into sin God was God for us and was quite
capable of worrying about things and taking care of them all on His own.

Rest, beloved, yes, we need rest because there is only one almighty and it is not you and not me.
Every night that we lay our heads down to sleep reminds us of this truth. Every time we grow
tired and need to sit down for a moment sets it before our eyes as well. As we are reminded ever
more frequently of it as our days increase in this world and we need to rest more often and for
longer. No, we are not almighty, we are not the Lord, there is only one God and it is not any one
of us. And so every moment of weakness, beloved, every time we are overwhelmed by
everything, rather than being a moment that makes us question and wonder what’s wrong with
us, is a blessed opportunity to recognize that the Lord is God.
And so then too can every time that we rest be an act of confession that He is the Lord. Every
quiet moment sitting down doing nothing can be a wordless witness of who is the God of
Heaven. Every afternoon nap and nighttime sleep can be a profound act of living faith in and
silent praise to the God of heaven. As Luther once said to someone who was overworking
himself, “we serve God by doing nothing and in no better way than by doing nothing, which is
why He so strictly commanded the Sabbath rest.” Yes, beloved, as hard as it might be for poor
sinners set on working themselves to death and who think that the world or at least their corner
of it all depends on them and that we serve God best by all that we do, we serve God the best
when we do nothing.
And so resting is important and it can be and is a great act of faith, but the keeping of the
Sabbath is about more than resting, as Luther also pointed out, if resting is all that you have to do
to keep the third commandment then any drunken peasant lying face down in the tavern on a
Sunday morning could be said to be keeping the 3rd commandment. God makes it clear that this
isn’t the case, when He says to Israel that the seventh day is a Sabbath to the Lord your God.
The Sabbath was about more than resting, it was a rest to remind them that the Lord was their
God and that He had saved them from the endless work of slavery in Egypt. The sabbath was a
time to sit down and rest before the Lord in His Word and simply let Him be God so that they
could go on into their week’s work refreshed in the truth that everything depended on Him and
was in His hands.
The Pharisees that Jesus has a run in with today, had gotten everything all turned around, in their
zeal for the law they had put a fence around it, to be sure that they weren’t breaking it. They set
the bar of the law higher than it actually was so that they could be sure not to miss it. So that
they didn’t misuse God’s name, Yahweh, they didn’t say it out loud at all but just said the Lord
instead. And so with the third commandment they said that you couldn’t do all kinds of things to
make sure that they were resting enough to keep the commandment. What the disciples were
doing by picking the grain as they walked along, or gleaning, was actually allowed under the
third commandment, but the Pharisees who wanted to be extra cautious said that it was wrong to
do it.
In their misguided way the Pharisees had put the Sabbath ahead of the people for which it was
given. The Sabbath was given to be a blessed place of rest before the Lord not another burden to
crush them to the ground. And so God calls you to come away from all your work and activity
to rest in His presence in this place week by week not to give you something else to do for Him
but so that He can do something for you. God invites you here to Jesus, who came to earth to be
your Sabbath rest from all your work trying to please God and earn His favour. Yes, beloved,
God draws you here to Jesus, who completed, accomplished and finished all things for you on
Golgotha, so that you can rest in His work for you here and be renewed and refreshed in the truth
that the Lord is God and that the whole world, including your little corner of it is firmly in His
very capable hands. God beckons you here to Jesus to receive forgiveness for all your sins and
to give you the life and salvation that He earned for you with His mighty outstretched arms on
the cross so that you might rest now and forever in His peace. Amen.