Written by T.M. Suffield |
Tuesday, September 28, 2021
To keep the Sabbath—the very aim of creation—is to understand that you are part of a complicated pattern of time, of bringing order to chaos, and knowing that you are a creature rather than the Creator. We keep weekly the day of stopping, of not-creating, so that we learn these truths from the world around us.

The Bible starts with seven words. Then the second sentence has fourteen words. Then there are seven paragraphs each describing a day in this week of seven days. The seventh of these includes three parallel seven word phrases.
None of this is an accident. In our modern day with our modern eyes it can look like an accident, but it’s a deliberately formed piece of writing that is trying to instruct us. With our modern eyes we expect a sentence to do one thing, the first sentence of the Bible is doing so many different and layered things we can scarcely count them. We need new eyes.
In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.
Instantly we are confronted with time: God is there in the beginning before the heavens and the earth. We are confronted with the creator: it is God who creates as an act of fiat. We see that God creates from nothing, and in a few sentences time we discover that he does it by speaking. We can read this in parallel with other creation myths that the Hebrews would have known like the Enuma Elish and note the stunning parallels and differences that show us how different Yahweh is to the gods of the Babylonians, and much more besides.
But I’d like to start somewhere else.
This seven word sentence starts with the word בְּרֵאשִׁית, which we usually translate ‘in the beginning’. Nothing wrong with that translation, but it’s worth noticing that the Hebrew idiom which means first or beginning is ‘from the head’. Which means not a lot at all in and of itself, it’s idiomatic and arguing from etymology ends you up thinking a butterfly is a sort of fairy that attends milkmaids churning.
Except, with open eyes that know the hymn of Colossians chapter 1, the idea that from the head God created the heavens and the earth is evocative, to say the least. From him and to him and through him, in fact.
The opening word of the Bible announces—to those with eyes of faith—that the world is created from Jesus, and that everything else flows from him too. It preaches the gospel, that there is a Head in God who we can follow to be saved.
That’s not really where I wanted to start, either.
Read More

After NBC News noted that the book was banned in Florida’s Brevard Public Schools, challenged by parents in New Jersey and removed from Wake County Public Libraries in North Carolina, NBC News vilified GOP Texas Gov. Greg Abbott and GOP South Carolina Gov. Henry McMaster, saying they “piled onto the outrage last month” by asking for investigations as to how  “obscene” and “pornographic” books were in schools.

The author of “Gender Queer: A Memoir,” a book which has triggered harsh criticism at school boards for keeping it in school libraries, told NBC News that what NBC News called its “graphic illustrations of LGBTQ sexual experiences” are “integral” and that “we need to reduce the shame” regarding sex among teenagers.
Maia Kobabe’s book “is a de facto guide on gender identity that grapples with the hardships of coming out, the confusion of adolescent crushes and the trauma of being nonbinary in a society that largely sees gender as limited to two categories: man and woman,” NBC News gushed, adding that Kobabe “uses gender-neutral pronouns e, em and eir.”
The author of “Gender Queer: A Memoir,” a book which has triggered harsh criticism at school boards for keeping it in school libraries, told NBC News that what NBC News called its “graphic illustrations of LGBTQ sexual experiences” are “integral” and that “we need to reduce the shame” regarding sex among teenagers.
Maia Kobabe’s book “is a de facto guide on gender identity that grapples with the hardships of coming out, the confusion of adolescent crushes and the trauma of being nonbinary in a society that largely sees gender as limited to two categories: man and woman,” NBC News gushed, adding that Kobabe “uses gender-neutral pronouns e, em and eir.”
Read More

Written by Forrest L. Marion |
Wednesday, August 23, 2023
Non-competitive activities, however, may retain one’s focus on the Lord – if engaged in it thoughtfully. Again, readers may think of their favorite examples, from going for a walk or a bike ride with their children/grandchildren to a dad throwing a baseball with his son in the backyard to various other outings or indoor activities that allow for engaging in conversation or reflection on God’s sovereignty, creativity, and lovingkindness – or on the morning’s teaching and preaching. 

Among Christians, Presbyterians generally are those best attuned to the importance of the Christian Sabbath, or Lord’s Day. But this shared sense of importance does not translate to full agreement on the day’s nature or observance. For centuries, followers of Jesus Christ have differed regarding the observance of the fourth commandment.
Regardless, the Westminster Standards highlight the observance of the Lord’s Day which commemorates the resurrection of the Lord Jesus on the first day of the week. The Larger Catechism devotes no less than 7 questions – of 196 – to the fourth commandment (#115-121).
Question 117 asks, “How is the sabbath or the Lord’s day to be sanctified?” The most relevant portion of the lengthy answer is, “The sabbath or Lord’s day is to be sanctified by an holy resting all the day, not only from such works as are at all times sinful, but even from such worldly employments and recreations as are on other days lawful.” The answer to question 119 on “the sins forbidden in the fourth commandment” reiterates the forbidding of “all needless works, words, and thoughts, about our worldly employments and recreations.”
The matter of worldly recreations is the narrow topic here.
A decade ago, while serving on my presbytery’s theological examining committee, I realized that the “recreations” clause was the one nearly always mentioned by candidates taking “exceptions” to the Westminster Standards. That experience has been reinforced by articles in The Aquila Report over the years as well.
One article in 2013 by Teaching Elder (TE) Jason A. Van Bemmel observed: “The biggest objection I have to ‘worldly recreations’ is that people seem eager to engage in leisure activities that do not focus their own hearts and minds on the Lord and that require others to work in order to serve them.”
In 2015, TE Benjamin Shaw expressed the issue of post-morning-worship Lord’s day activities with both humor and insight:
So our civil culture and our theological culture alike lean against prohibiting ‘recreations’ on the Sabbath. Then, we are presented the Dickensian bogeyman of the poor children of Sabbatarians, forced to sit in uncomfortable straight-backed chairs all Sunday afternoon, dressed in their Sunday-best, while their grim-faced father reads to them the opening chapters of 1 Chronicles.    
Assuming one’s regular attendance upon divine worship in the morning at a minimum, must we choose between Sabbath afternoon “leisure activities” that do not focus on the Lord on the one hand and “grim-faced” fathers reading 1 Chronicles’ genealogical chapters to their children on the other? Is there not a more biblical, even confessional, standard to be found somewhere between those two extremes?
All Christians acknowledge the Bible as their highest authority, but challenges may arise when Scripture does not use a particular word that carries weight in one’s confessional documents. The Westminster Standards use the word, “recreations,” which does not appear in the 1599 Geneva Bible or the 1611 King James Bible, the versions most familiar to the assembly when it met several decades later. Isaiah 58:13-14 – historically the favorite Scripture passage of Presbyterians on the topic – arguably comes closest to addressing the essence of recreational activity:
If thou turn away thy foot from the Sabbath, from doing thy will on mine Holy day, and call the Sabbath a delight to consecrate it, as glorious to the Lord, and shalt honor him, not doing thine own ways, nor seeking thine own will, nor speaking a vain word,
Then shalt thou delight in the Lord, and I will cause thee to mount upon the high places of the earth, and feed thee with the heritage of Jacob thy father: for the mouth of the Lord hath spoken it.      
Phrases such as, “. . . doing thy will on mine Holy day” and “not doing thine own ways, nor seeking thine own will,” point toward the essence of the recreations clause. In our culture, it’s all about “thine own will” – not God’s will. Even serious Christians are not exempt from such pernicious influences.
I am convinced this is where Greg Bahnsen’s thinking may help. He argued for viewing the recreations clause in the context of competitive versus non-competitive activities.*
Competitive activities by their nature focus one’s attention on the individual or one’s team. Readers may bring to mind their own examples of competition from sports to drama to music and so on. Such competitive activities promote “thine own will.” The very nature of competition means the activity must be self- or man-focused; not God-focused.
Non-competitive activities, however, may retain one’s focus on the Lord – if engaged in it thoughtfully. Again, readers may think of their favorite examples, from going for a walk or a bike ride with their children/grandchildren to a dad throwing a baseball with his son in the backyard to various other outings or indoor activities that allow for engaging in conversation or reflection on God’s sovereignty, creativity, and lovingkindness – or on the morning’s teaching and preaching.
While I cannot recall what Bahnsen may have said about King James I’s infamous – especially to the Puritans – Book of Sports, or Declaration of Sports, which was first issued in 1618 and reissued in 1633 by Charles I, without doubt the Westminster divines had this document in mind when they met in the 1640s. Some pastors, including John Davenport and Thomas Shepard, left England for America, partly because of Charles’s aggressive undermining of the Sabbath through the declaration’s reissuance (Davenport found refuge for a time in the Netherlands). Broader persecution influenced other pastors to emigrate, including John Cotton and Thomas Hooker, who traveled to America in July 1633, three months prior to the reissuance.
It is significant that several of the “lawful recreations” in which James and Charles encouraged their subjects to engage on Sabbath afternoons, were competitive in nature: “archery for men, leaping, vaulting.” The king considered them to be “exercises as may make their bodies more able for war, when we or our successors shall have occasion to use them.” This background supports the validity of viewing Westminster’s “recreations” within the framework of the competitive/non-competitive nature of Sabbath activities as Greg Bahnsen suggested.
Some writers argue for a study to address the Westminster Standards’ handling of the fourth commandment and/or the “recreations” clause. Until that happens, perhaps asking oneself whether a Sabbath activity being considered is competitive, or non-competitive, may promote a more faithful observance of the day and greater delighting in the Lord, which offers the believer a glimpse of the eternal Sabbath toward which he is headed.
Forrest L. Marion is a member of First Presbyterian Church (PCA), Crossville, Tennessee.

*Note: I’m unable to cite that roughly thirty years ago – in the olden days of audiocassettes – I listened to a (borrowed) taped message of Dr. Greg Bahnsen (1948-1995) in which he argued for viewing Sabbath “recreations” through the window of competitive/non-competitive activities. While I regret not having taken notes on his message, my family and former church members will testify that in the 1990s anything touching upon the Christian Sabbath and its observance commanded my attention; my dissertation dealt with the subject. Years later, I contacted Bahnsen Theological Seminary, but they were unable to locate this taped message. If any reader is familiar with this message of Dr. Bahnsen’s, please contact me at [email protected].
Related Posts: