How (and How Not) to Keep the Sabbath
When we set apart the first day of the week, we are declaring openly that Jesus Christ was raised from the dead. We are testifying to his saving work for sinners. We are no less declaring the reality of the “rest” that awaits us in the consummation—the fullness of the blessing, life, and glory in Christ. Observing the Sabbath is a profound declaration of the gospel—its truth, its importance, and its claim on our hearts and lives.
What is the Sabbath?
Imagine that you are walking in the neighborhood of a busy city and someone flags you down from the stoop of their brownstone. The homeowner is waving with some urgency, so you stop to see what they want. “Can you come in the house and change out my lightbulb?” they ask you. “Why do you need me to change out your lightbulb?” you reply. “Because I’m Jewish, it’s the Sabbath, and I can’t work on the Sabbath. The house is dark and we need the bulb changed. I figured that since you were a Gentile, you wouldn’t have a problem with doing it.”
Something very much like that happened to a friend of mine many years ago (and he gladly changed the bulb). I suspect that it captures many of the impressions that Christians often have about the Sabbath—It’s just for Israel, but it’s not for the Church. The Sabbath is legalistic and stifling because it burdens people with unreasonable, man-made rules. I am free from the law in Christ, so why would I ever think about observing the Sabbath?
It is tempting to rush into discussions about what to do (and not to do) on the Sabbath. But before we get there, there are a couple of questions that we need to ask. First, what is the Sabbath? The Sabbath is a weekly day that God has appointed for human beings to rest from the labors and activities that fill out the other six days and to devote that day to the worship of God and fellowship with his people. The Hebrew word underlying the English word sabbath means “rest.” The Sabbath is a day of holy resting, of spiritual refreshment in God. We see God establishing the Sabbath at creation. He completed his works of creation in six days, and then he “rested on the seventh day” (Gen. 2:2). That “seventh day” was a day that God “blessed” and “made . . . holy” (Gen. 2:3), that is, a day set apart for people to worship God.
In the life of Israel, the Sabbath takes on added meaning. In Deuteronomy 5:12–15, God tells his people that the Sabbath is a day to “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” (Deut. 5:15). It is a day to remember the mighty work of God in redeeming his people. Since the Exodus always pointed forward to God’s work in redeeming his people from their sin through Jesus Christ, the Sabbath, therefore, commemorates what God has done in Christ to save sinners.
Should We Still Observe?
Second, is the Sabbath something that Christians should observe? Some may interject at this point, What you have been saying is all well and good, but that’s the Old Testament. What about the New Testament? That is an excellent question, and the New Testament affirms the Sabbath as a standing commandment for all people. Jesus taught often about the Sabbath. In the Gospels, we see him correcting misunderstandings of the Sabbath. The religious leaders of Jesus’s day had taken a commandment that was to be a joy and had turned it into a miserable burden.
-
We Need Gospel Clarity
A life that seems to have no interest in Christ and his church nor pays any heed to his commands is not a living, active faith promoted from within by the Holy Spirit. It is a non-existent faith. It is belief that some words you said years ago is good enough to deal with your sin once and for all and to secure a place in Heaven for you. I’m afraid that isn’t a teaching you will find anywhere in the Bible. Apart from ongoing, active faith in Christ there is no salvation and telling people otherwise is not loving them, it is actively encouraging them on their way to a lost eternity.
I have lost count of the number of times I have heard a story approximating the following. Somebody has grown up going to church, hearing the gospel and made a profession of faith or prayed the sinners prayer. They apparently go on with the Lord for a bit until, eventually, drifting away from the church and Christ. If pressed, they might still say they believe, but there is absolutely nothing about their lifestyle that gives any indication that this is any more than mere words. For many, there isn’t even a claim to love Jesus.
This sort of story does the rounds and few Christians wouldn’t be able to tell you of one they know about. But I have also noticed, with troubling frequency, how many people under those circumstances still want to insist that person is a believer and belongs to the Lord. There is no sign of fruit, no evidence of belief and often no understanding of the gospel. But nonetheless, we still hear that the Lord still has them, for some reason. This concerns me deeply for two reasons.
First, it doesn’t do anything to help those people come to Christ. If we continue to affirm that somebody is a believer who has clearly departed from the faith, we are doing nothing other than comfort that person all the way to perdition. In all honesty, I cannot wrap my head around why you would want that for your family and friends. Why would you want them to go on in the false belief that they’re alright as they are by telling them the profession they made years before – despite every evidence to the contrary that it ultimately wasn’t genuine – are somehow still believers?
If we claim to love our family and friends, we surely can’t be content with affirming them in beliefs that are actively damaging to them. They don’t need our reassurance that they’re safe in the Lord; they need the gospel. They need to hear that they aren’t okay and, if they carry on as they are, they will remain outside of Christ and face all the disastrous consequences of being so. To comfort somebody as a believer, to affirm faith that clearly doesn’t exist, does them no favour at all. It is actually damaging the very people we claim to love.
I have heard similar things said to comfort believing parents regarding their unbelieving children. But again, it might feel nice to tell people that the Lord still has their children, but we don’t actually help them or their children by pretending it is so. Instead, helping people see the reality of the situation – that without ongoing, active faith in Christ there is no salvation and that is effected by the Holy Spirit, who is obviously absent in the heart of someone who has no concern for holiness – means they can continue to hold out the gospel clearly to those who need to hear it.
I appreciate with family and friends it is not always the easiest thing to do. Especially if the gospel is considered to be something we have heard hundreds of times before and have no interest in it.
Read More -
Psalm 136 and the Blessing of Spiritual Speed Bumps
Every aspect of your life story is underscored and interwoven with God’s love. You and I never “move on” from remembering and basking in his steadfast love. We never graduate from the school of his love. It’s the spiritual air we breathe, the oxygen we need as we embrace blessings, endure hardship, and wrestle with sin. How much we need to count on the reality that he’s set his love upon us no matter what, and that he is truly working all things for good for those he fiercely loves.
Does the love of God still feel like breaking news in your life? If we’re honest, sometimes the “old, old story” seems, well, old to us, particularly if we’ve been a Christian for many years. But the writers of Scripture never tire of recounting this theme. They never take it for granted.
Psalm 136 gives us a vivid picture of what keeping God’s steadfast love front and center looks like in the life story of God’s people. It begins with thanksgiving to God (v.1–3) and recites Israel’s history from the creation of the world (v.4–9), through the exodus (v.10–16), and into the promised land (v.17–22). In fact, there are several other psalms that rehearse Israel’s story, including Psalms 78, 105, 106, and 135. But Psalm 136 is unique for the phrase that is repeated in every single verse—a total of 26 times!—“for his steadfast love endures forever.”
In one sense, the story reads more smoothly without the refrain. Just try reading the first half of each verse aloud and skip the refrain, and you will see that it’s quite coherent. Doing this, however, would subvert the inspired poet’s aim, which we start to grasp when we read it aloud all the way through. Try it now. What do you notice? Did the refrain sometimes feel like overkill to you? Did you find yourself impatient to get through the psalm? Were you bored and thinking by the end, “Yeah, yeah, I know.” I’ve certainly experienced that as I’ve read this psalm in the past, but in my most recent reading, I took time to consider: What is the psalmist’s point in keeping this refrain front and center throughout?
In fact, the refrain serves as a spiritual speed bump. It slows us down. Its repetition draws our attention again and again to God. It reminds us that absolutely everything that happened in Israel’s history is purposeful and is tethered to the steadfast love of God. Creation. Rescue from slavery. Sustenance in the wilderness. Inheritance of the promised land. Through good and bad, thick and thin, sin and suffering, God is accomplishing his good purposes in his people.
Read More
Related Posts: -
Brother, Sister—Don’t Lose Your Home to a Passing Storm
Above the passing sands and unsettling storms of time—God stands true. Cultural moments come and go, but only a life founded in the words and work of Jesus Christ can truly stand—not just the storm of opposition but the final storm of divine judgement.
Brother in Christ, sister in Christ, I implore you: don’t lose your home to a passing storm. At present your pressing temptation to alter or abandon your faith feels final and inevitable, a logical and irresistible imperative to fall back or fall away which doesn’t carry options or off-ramps—and that is hard to bear. Some movement or cultural moment is storming your conscience or your core beliefs, laying siege ramps to your certainties, cutting off supply lines to the city of your soul, and somewhere you have come to believe that resistance is futile. Brother in Christ, sister in Christ, I implore you: don’t lose your home to a passing storm.
As you consider deconstruction, deconversion or even the moral dereliction of the truth as it is in Jesus Christ, may I offer to you four facts that might anchor the home of your heart and might help you to stand firm when drifting back or away feel like a foregone conclusion:
1. Now is not absolute.
Believers of all ages, but particularly young Christians are vulnerable to the tyranny of “now.” I know that you can feel like your life, locked as it is in the permanent present tense of media and messaging, is not related to what has gone before you or what might follow you—but this is a terrible illusion. Now is not absolute, and pinning your principles on the situation at present will put you in unthinkable peril. Let me tell you about two periods when “now” looked right “then,” but looked foolish later.
When I was in my late teens I enrolled for a degree in English (with some philosophy). I loved the academic challenges this brought and the wide literature it led me into. Piggy-backing on all of this intellectual material, however, was postmodernism. Long before Christians spoke or wrote about this (ad nauseam) the ideology was alive in academic circles. In lecture after lecture, seminar after seminar, the fluidity of truth claims and the subjectivity of reason were emphasised over and over again until I began to fear and question what I had been taught and what I had believed. How could credible Christianity emerge from this truth hurricane with anything intact? The answer: it did because now is not absolute. Postmodernism came and went, rose and fell, just as every intellectual movement does (normally when it makes landfall in lived experience). I didn’t lose my home to that passing storm, and I am grateful for God’s grace.
Read More
Related Posts:
