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A Sabbath Day's Journey

By: Rev. Paul Landgraf
What is a Sabbath day's journey? First of all, it is a Jewish expression. We measure distances in meters or yards. The Jews had a certain distance that they could walk on Saturday before it would be considered work. So their synagogues that they went to on Saturday could not be very far away. The word appears only in Acts 1:12 and indicates a distance of about three-quarters of a mile.

With that in mind, I think it is important to remember the origins of Christianity. Just because we have an Old Testament, it does not mean that we call it the 'Outdated Testament'. Much of the Old Testament has a literary structure that we are not aware of because of our modern emphasis on chapter and verse divisions. Within many of these blogs, I try to get the reader to see a bigger picture, a larger perspective that often includes the Old Testament and the environment that was present when the New Testament was seeing the Light of the day.

Second, a Sabbath day's journey is intentionally short. These 'journeys' with a text, almost always one of the three readings for that Sunday, are deliberately brief discussions. This blog was never designed to be a comprehensive look at any text. Sometimes a specific word is studied in detail. But, as a whole, a blog entry, by itself, is meant to be quite brief.

Finally, since the term 'Sabbath day's journey' appears in Acts, it is meant to appeal to a wide variety of people. This blog is meant for those who cannot come on Sunday mornings. And it is also for those who do come on Sunday mornings but would also like a further study of the text. It is also for those who live somewhere else in the world (besides Drake and Freedom, Missouri, USA) and would simply like a further study of the text. It was meant to get these different groups of people to start thinking about the biblical texts. Part of the reason for this blog is that I am not able to have a bible class on Sunday mornings with either congregation, and so, to have a blog like this seemed like a good idea. I hope it is helpful for you, in whatever situation you may be.

Any feedback would be greatly appreciated. And thank you for taking the time to read this!

December 22nd, 2018

12/22/2018

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This year the fourth Sunday in Advent happens to be quite close to Christmas. I think that, more important than that fact, is that the Gospel text for this Sunday [Luke 1:39-45] happens to be quite close to the beginning of this Gospel account. We are never going to get any closer, so I think it is important to talk about it.

The importance of the beginning of a book has become less important recently. With the invention of the outline, the focus of the structure of a book has moved away from the text to a group of words which are separate from the text. When a person is studying an outline, he or she is no longer studying the text.

All four gospel accounts have important beginnings which should be studied thoroughly. The beginnings of other books of the bible should also be studied thoroughly. The beginning of an account not only may help to understand the structure of the account, but it may also point to what is important; those two things are actually connected to each other!

The structure gives the big picture; it gives the reader the reason why the author is writing this work. That reason has unfortunately been somewhat lost when it comes to the gospel accounts. The predominating thought in our century is that there is very little information about Jesus from other sources, so this particular source is meant to give some more information.

The structure of the first four verses of the Gospel according to Luke has a well-known connection, not to the beginning of the book of Acts, the place where one would expect a connection (since both works are by the same writer), but to the so-called Apostolic Decree that is found in Acts 15.

The issue at the Jerusalem Council is one of salvation. How is a person saved? Some people were saying that doing a certain commandment was necessary (Acts 15:5). Peter responds with the wonderful statement that ‘we believe that we will be saved through the grace of the Lord Jesus…(15:11).’​

Some people are happy when they have more information, but these days, many people seemed to be overwhelmed with more information. True joy comes with salvation. And I hope that message is clear throughout this entire church year.
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