“Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy. Six days you shall labor, and do all your work, but the seventh day is a Sabbath to Yahweh your God. On it you shall not do any work, you, or your son, or your daughter, your male servant, or your female servant, or your livestock, or the sojourner who is within your gates. For in six days Yahweh made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them, and rested on the seventh day. Therefore Yahweh blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy.”
Exodus 20:8-11
In modern America, we are not well acquainted with the Sabbath. We go about our lives doing much of what we do Monday through Saturday on Sunday. Why do any different? Yet the Lord knew what He was doing when he created the world the way He did. The Scriptures are written down for a reason, and every bit of information that the Lord sovereignly ordained to be in it is for our edification in the faith, including the way in which He created the world in six days, and rested the seventh.
The concept of a Sabbath is embedded into the general revelation of creation in such a way that nonbelievers of all stripes recognize its necessity. Most societies have had a day in seven for resting from work. Explicitly anti-Christian societies have tried to impose a different week into the mix. Revolutionary France and Soviet Russia both tried to introduce an uninterrupted week so that the Christians would not have a reason to meet for worship on Sunday. Such efforts proved unfruitful, however, and both governments gave up on the project. Christians in control of societies since the time of Constantine have ordered societies around the Sabbath, and Puritans rightly recognized that societies that do not recognize the Sabbath properly will degrade into overworked populaces that are abused by their employees who rest at nothing to increase profits, a prediction that unfortunately came true today in many respects.
Yet why would God create a world in which his creatures needed such a rest? If He is God, He could’ve created us with the energy to keep going. Our Lord, however, knew how easily it is for us to get distracted with the good things that we are supposed to do from the best thing we are supposed to do: worship Him. Work in all its forms consumes our minds. We want to get projects done in our careers; we want to get things done around the house; we want to sit down and tend to our bills. None of these things are bad, in fact they are necessary and good. Yet they take away from the best thing of all, and the Lord in His mercy calls for us to take time away from them to focus upon Him.
So what does that look like? We know that at the very least, it is attending worship each Sunday. In the presence of our Holy God, we can allow the distractions of this world to melt away as we sing His praises and are nourished by Word and Sacrament. We are also nourished by the fellowship of the other saints that join us in such worship. As simple as this is, too many Christians have stopped viewing this as an imperative in many circumstances. Church, in their view, is there for the uplifting of Christians, but it is there solely for their benefit in their private religion they have with God. But Hebrews 10 says that we ought not neglect the gathering. It is a command. Our Lord knows it benefits us when we worship Him and commune with the saints, yet it is no less a command for us to do so, as He is worthy of all praise and adoration, and those who neglect those ways which He has commanded us to do so are committing sin.
It is, however, not only that we go to church on Sunday. Our church strives to have further opportunity in Sunday School for learning more about our faith. We also have evening service so that the preached word is available for God’s people not once but twice. Many throughout the ages of the Reformed church have made it a regular practice to be hospitable on the Lord’s Day, welcoming people into their homes to have lunch between services and resting and enjoying the time together away from the worries of the work week. Often this includes family worship and discussion of the sermon. The fourth command in the Ten Commands says to “remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy.” To keep it holy means to set the day aside, separate in nature from the other days. We do these things not as some strict code like the Pharisees had, but to remember the day as the Lord created it, and to remember Him and what He has done.
It has been said before, “If you’re a Christian, no one should have to beg you to come to church.” We should delight in doing so, and we should be eager to be filled by the preaching of the Word. Evening services, though foreign to this day and age, give us a double portion if we are willing to take it, and remind us of the fact that we do not remember a Sabbath morning, but a whole Sabbath day. As we consider what it means to keep the day holy, let us fight the flesh that tells us we need the extra time for work, and trust in God’s sovereignty that all will be well as we work diligently the other six days. Our Lord knew what He was doing when He kept a record of the creation week to show us what we mimic in the weeks we live. And ultimately, He did so to remind us of the rest we would enter into at the end of all things, when all is made right, and we will hear, “well done, good and faithful servant.”
Older
Top
