Lay down your sweet and weary head Night has fallen, you've come to journey's end From tent-toting patriarchs greeting promises from afar, to vagabonds and vagrants doomed to wander in a wasteland, God's people never saw final satisfaction in the journey. Traveling is tough going. We seek the promised land, the city with foundations, whose designer and builder is God, aiding you on towards the destination. Welcome to Journey's End. You've come to Journey's End. Tony, if I decided to stand up in an evangelical church today and say, brothers and sisters, God no longer cares if you steal, lie, murder, or commit adultery, because we're no longer under the law, how do you think people would respond to that? I don't think people would tolerate that, at least not publicly. Why? Well, I think people have a sense that we're still under the law, at least in obedience to the Ten Commandments. But as we'll get to this later, I think people certainly feel like we're under the second part of the Ten Commandments, which is the Fifth Commandment through the Tenth Commandment, and that has to do with how we treat one another. And so people have a sense that, yeah, these things are wrong, and we can't do them. Okay, so now if I said to the same group, God no longer cares about when or how you worship Him, how do you think people would respond to that? I think most people would say something like, well, God does care about how we worship him, but what's really important is that we worship God from our hearts. And they might quote John chapter 4, for example, where Jesus said to the woman at the well that the day is coming when we'll no longer worship in a temple made with hands, but we'll worship God in spirit and in truth. And so people have a sense in which God cares about our sincerity, cares about worshiping him from our hearts, but how we worship Him in terms of the externals, whether it's on Sunday or Tuesday or whether it's in a regular church service or whether it's in our home or while I'm at the swimming pool or whatever, most people, I think that God really doesn't care as much about that. We've been talking for a few weeks about the law and legalism. We've shown why we believe there's more continuity in the law than a lot of people often think, and it has to do with several things. We've talked about how God wrote the Bible, not two different Bibles, Old and New Testaments, so that one author means that there's going to be more continuity. God deals with humans on the same terms throughout history through covenants, and since he deals with people the same way, then that leads towards continuity. And also, morality doesn't change with time because it's a reflection of an unchangeable God. So last week we talked about Romans 14 and the weaker and stronger brother issues. And we talked about things that are indifferent. And indifferent things are not clear matters of ethical laws like lying and murder and adultery, but things that are not spelled out clearly over which good Christians have differing levels of conscience as to whether or not they can personally take in something that somebody else sees as fine according to God's word. Well in Romans 14, Paul brings up the issue of holy days. One person esteems one day as better than another, while another esteems all days alike. Each one should be fully convinced in his own mind. The one who observes the day observes it in honor of the Lord." Verses 5-6. Based on this, our experience has been that a lot of people want to take the subject of the Sabbath-keeping, which they think comes from Paul's discussion here, and apply it to the question of legalism. We thought this subject of the Sabbath might be a good case study to help people think through a difficult question, which is the Sabbath, in light of the larger issues of law and legalism. Good afternoon. I'm Doug Van Dorn. I'm the pastor of the Reformed Baptist Church of Northern Colorado. We're located in Boulder in Gunbarrel, and Tony Jackson is the co-host, and he's at Reformation Baptist Church down in South Denver in Highlands Ranch. Tony, I've noticed that this whole topic of the Sabbath is still one that brings a lot of questions to people's minds. Help us see why people would want to get the Sabbath out of Romans 14 verses 5-6. Well there's another passage I think that's even more descriptive that people often point to when talking about this issue of the Sabbath and that comes from Colossians chapter 2 and verse 16 and following, Paul says there, therefore let no one pass judgment on you in questions of food and drink or with regard to a festival or a new moon or a Sabbath. And then he says, these are a shadow of things to come. The substance belongs to Christ. And so because of Romans 14 and Colossians 2, a lot of people look at the Sabbath as being something that is no longer required of Christians in the New Testament. In fact, I was reading pastor's blog the other day, and he was talking about the law in the New Testament, and he made a statement that went something like this, I'm really kind of paraphrasing, but he essentially said, look, we're not under the law as New Testament Christians, especially not keeping the Sabbath. I thought it was interesting that he used the word like especially and that seems to be the hot topic for a lot of people that want to teach that we're no longer under the law in the New Testament as believers because we're under grace and not law. They especially want to talk about the Sabbath. We're not under the Sabbath. In other words, they would say, yeah, we still have to love our brothers, we still, you know, should not commit adultery, we should not covet, etc. But when it comes to the Sabbath, people don't believe that it's binding on believers today. Yeah, and so the Romans 14 passage kind of comes alongside of the one in Colossians, supposedly, because he's talking about observing days. And when you look at church history, you see that Christians stopped worshiping on the seventh day, which was the Sabbath day in the Old Testament. We read that Christians are no longer bound to keep festival days of Israel. Really, we think that that's what the Sabbaths in Colossians is talking about is these feast days, the year of Jubilee or the Feast of Tabernacles or whatever the case might be. So, what's the idea? Kind of summarize what we're bringing up here and saying that these passages are talking about the Sabbath. So a lot of people that would take this view that we no longer are required to keep the Sabbath, they would say that the Sabbath is something that you should do according to your conscience. So they would put it in a category of that which is indifferent, which we talked about last week from Romans 14, that which is no longer required of Christians. And so, if you look at it from that perspective, that it's indifferent, then it would fall under that issue of legalism that we talked about. That if you say that keeping the Sabbath in the New Testament is a requirement, then you're a legalist. That's what people would say about us who believe that keeping the Sabbath is a requirement of Christians in the New Testament, that we're legalists. But what's wrong with that? Well, first of all, I would want to say that there is an awful lot of legalism that some people can bring to this issue with regard to exact ways that everybody has to keep the Sabbath. So we'll admit that. But the problem is that the Sabbath commandment comes in the Ten Commandments, doesn't it? So I think what we need to do is look for a little bit at the idea of moral law again, which we talked about for a couple of shows this earlier in May, and think about Sabbath with regard to that. So if we think about just the first table of the law, that's our duty towards God. That's the first four commandments. It's the easy way to think about the Ten Commandments. It's divided into two tablets. And then the second table, the last six, is our duty to man. And keeping the Sabbath day holy is the fourth commandment with regard to our duty towards God. So what I notice in the questions that I kind of asked you at the beginning is how many of us still believe that God has some kind of a standard that we need to obey with regard to each other, but we really aren't all that sure how much he really cares about any standard with regard to himself and worship. And to me it's kind of an interesting puzzle. So, let's keep it basic for a minute. What this suggests to me is that somehow we think that the second table of the law hasn't changed all that radically, but the first table of the Ten Commandments, we're not really sure about that. Yeah, I think that's exactly right. That's where a lot of Christians are really unsure about how to operate. In the Old Testament, the application of the first table of the law, the first four commandments, was pretty clear. This is exactly how you are to keep the first four commandments. In your worship, God actually prescribed how Israel was to worship him in great detail. In the New Testament, we don't have the same level of detail that we have in the Old Testament. Remember, we've talked about this idea that in the New Covenant, in the New Testament, we're still under law, but there's a different administration of the same law. So Moses has one administration, Hebrews talks about this, one house, one administration, and Jesus has another administration. and they don't look exactly alike. And we'll talk more about this, but that's where I think a lot of Christians really become unsure about how to keep the first four commandments. And then you have these passages in the New Testament that we just read in Romans 14 and Colossians 2 that seem to muddy the waters further. I think we need to start first, and you did mention this, but I think we need to be very clear that especially the Colossians 2 passage is not teaching. Paul is not teaching here. If you look at the context, that we shouldn't let anyone pass judgment on us in regards to keeping the Sabbath. In fact, he says very clearly, it's a Sabbath. And if you look at it in the context of what Paul is saying there in regards to a festival, new moon, or a Sabbath, then that easily fits the context of the Old Testament as to what you said. a festival day, a new moon, a jubilee day, the feasts that were specifically commanded for Israel to keep, which are now fulfilled in Christ. So, we have to be honest with the text, that Paul is not talking about the Sabbath here, he is talking about the Sabbaths in regards to the specific requirements of Israel in following the ceremonial law. Let's look at the first three commandments just for a minute. And if you go through them, the first one says, you shall not have any other gods before me. And I think almost everybody would say, yeah, that's true. That continues today. And then the second commandment, you shall not make any idols. We're going to talk about that commandment next week. But I think on the surface of it, people would again say, yeah, you shouldn't have any idols. The third commandment, you shouldn't take the name of the Lord in vain. And people will say, yeah, you really shouldn't take the name of the Lord in vain. skip that one skip the fourth one go to the five you know with honoring your mother and father and then all the way down through the the tenth commandment people are gonna say yeah you shouldn't do that but for some reason when it comes to the Sabbath the Sabbath in the Ten Commandments people say yeah well God just doesn't really care about that anymore so I think a question that we should maybe explore for a minute is are whether or not this idea of Sabbath is a moral question, an unchanging reflection of something in the nature of God, like the other commandments are, or whether it really is a matter of just license and matters in difference. So, is there any way that we can think about the Sabbath that would help us to see that this is in fact a moral commandment that transcends Mount Sinai? That is a great question Doug, and I think that the text itself all throughout the Old Testament shows us that the Sabbath actually fits two categories. In one category it was given to Israel specifically in Exodus chapter 17 as a commandment for Israel to keep the Sabbath day. And then that Sabbath was worked out in various ways, in the way that they worshipped and the way that they worked and what they were and weren't supposed to do. And then it was also worked out the idea of Sabbath with the year of Jubilee and the Sabbath that was to be applied to the way that they kept the land and those kinds of ideas. So there was a specific application to Israel with the idea of Sabbath. But the idea of Sabbath itself is not first given to Israel, it's actually grounded on the foundation of creation. So, for example, in Exodus chapter 31, where here he's talking about profaning the Sabbath, the justification or the reason why he gives that we shouldn't profane the Sabbath, in verse 15 he says, for six days work may be done, but on the Sabbath day there is a Sabbath of complete rest. And the reason for that is because in verse 17 he says, it is a sign between me and the sons of Israel forever, for in six days the Lord made heaven and earth But on the seventh day he ceased from labor and was refreshed. So the Sabbath day goes back to the creation, not just to the giving of the law at Mount Sinai through Moses, but it actually goes back to creation in six days. God made the heavens and the earth. In six days you shall do all your labor. But on the seventh day, it's a Sabbath rest for the Lord. Another one of these to help people see that I find really fascinating is the story of the flood. And remember, the flood comes many, many, many centuries before Mount Sinai. Think about all of these ideas that are related to the way that Israel practiced the Sabbath in the Old Testament. Take with you seven pairs of clean animals. In seven days I will send rain on the earth. After seven days the waters of the flood came upon the earth. In the seventh month, on the 17th day of the month, you know, the ark comes to rest. Noah waits seven days and then he sends out a bird. He waits another seven days, he sends out another bird, and so on. So this idea of seven, which was the way that Sabbath was tied in in the Old Testament, is everywhere in the story of the Flood. Now that raises a question, I think, that we need to bring up, which is, what is the definition of Sabbath? A lot of people think that Sabbath means seven, and since Christians don't worship on the seventh day, we don't keep Sabbath anymore. Problem is, Sabbath doesn't mean seven. What does Sabbath mean? Well, Sabbath simply means rest. And that's where we need to put the focus on the concept of rest. In fact, one of the things that we've talked a lot about, Doug, is the idea of numbers in Scripture and the significance of them. And you can go back and do a study in the Old Testament of the idea of the eighth day. The 8th day in the Old Testament is kind of the new day of creation. The Israelites were to circumcise their sons, it says, on the 8th day. Well, if you maybe never thought about that, the idea of the 8th day in the Old Testament is kind of weird. If I said to you, Doug, look, on the 8th day we're supposed to do this, you would say, what are you talking about? Because how many days do we have in a week? Generally seven. And so this idea of the 8th day is kind of bizarre, but it has theological significance. And that significance is that it is speaking of the new day of creation. In fact, many of the ancient rabbis taught that the 8th day was the day of new creation. And so we can see theologically that there is continuity between the idea of the 8th day and the first day in the New Testament where we find the Apostles teaching believers about the first day of the week. So, for example, in Revelation 1.10, John says, I was in the Spirit on the Lord's day, he was speaking of the day of Christ's resurrection, and then you have passages such as Acts chapter 20 and verse 7 where Paul says, And so there he references the first day of the week. when believers would gather together to worship God. So it's not a big stretch to see how in the New Testament, the day takes on a new theological significance, the day of Christ's resurrection. So it's not the day itself that is in view with the idea of Sabbath. The word Sabbath simply means rest. And how we apply the significance to that day, we need to unpack further with what the whole of Scripture shows us. Okay, so let's kind of summarize here for a minute. What we're suggesting is that because Sabbath means rest and not seven, that the day itself is not essential to Sabbath. But Sabbath is a moral commandment because it goes all the way back to the very beginning of creation where God established the pattern of resting and he did it on the seventh day. Throughout the entire history of the Old Testament then, Sabbath was performed on the seventh day because that was an honor of creation. Christians changed the day of the Sabbath, but still the early church viewed what they were doing on the first day of the week still as participating in Sabbath rest. according to, you know, the way that the church is supposed to worship God and so on. But they did it on the first day of the week because they saw that creation had given way to new creation. As you said, it was foreshadowed in several of the laws in the Old Testament with regard to the eighth day. What happened on the eighth day, or you could also look at the eighth day, of course, as the first day, that would cause Christians to move the day but keep the idea of resting? What happened? What was so significant? Well, Christ was raised from the dead, and we rest in Christ in His finished work. And that's the idea that we find in the book of Hebrews, for example, and we'll get to that more in a minute. First, I want to ask this question, Doug. A lot of people say that the reason they don't believe the Sabbath is binding on Christians in the New Testament is because the Sabbath commandment is not repeated in the New Testament. And I would have to agree with them that there's not a verse that you can find in the New Testament that says Christians in the New Testament, especially Gentile Christians, have to keep the Sabbath. So that's where a lot of people get mixed up and they say, well, we don't have to keep the Sabbath because it's not commanded in the New Testament. Are there some passages in the New Testament that speak to this issue of keeping the Sabbath? does all sorts of things on the Sabbath. And these are in the Gospels, of course. And what we need to understand about what he was doing and what he was not doing is important. Jesus was keeping the Sabbath in accordance with the way it was supposed to be kept in the Old Testament. In other words, he says that He does his father's work on the Sabbath because his father has been working on the Sabbath up until now and he is also working in John 5. What was that work? Well, he was healing people. One time he spits on the ground and he makes mud and he puts it on this blind man's eyes and he heals him on the Sabbath. And he does this because he's showing that these man-made legalistic rules about the Sabbath that are given to protect the Sabbath actually keep people from keeping the Sabbath in the way that God had intended they should be. do all along. So we could look at really any of the Sabbath passages Jesus deals with in the Gospels. There's another kind of interesting one in 1 Timothy chapter 1 verses about 7 through 9 where Paul lists several things. In fact, several commentators have suggested that he lists ten things and that the ten things follow exactly in the order of of the Ten Commandments? Well, the fourth one happens to be unholy and profane people. And that language of profaning is directly applied to the Sabbath day many, many times in the Old Testament. You shall not profane the Sabbath. So those are the kinds of passages that we would suggest point to the continuity of the idea of resting, even though the day might change. Tony, another way of kind of getting at this, I think, is to ask... I'm going to ask you a couple questions. They're just yes or no questions. Do we still offer sacrifices in the New Testament? Well, we've talked about this and the answer is yes. It's just that our sacrifices look different than they did in the Old Testament, correct? Right. So we're not going into or we're not slaughtering lambs and so that blood will come out, but we're offering our bodies as living sacrifices. Another question, do we still worship God in the temple? The answer is yes. But it looks different than it did in the Old Testament, because the temple has changed from that building that was on top of Mount Zion, where there's now a big mosque, to the Church of Jesus Christ and the individual believer. And so the same thing would then go for the Sabbath. Do we still obey the Sabbath in the New Testament? Well yes, it's just that it doesn't look the same because as you brought up earlier, there's a different administration of the Sabbath in the New Testament. I would really encourage our listeners who are struggling with this idea and who are wrestling with it, if you really want to look at what scripture teaches about this, I would encourage you to carefully consider Hebrews chapter 10 verses 19 through 25. I'm not going to go through and exposit this whole passage, but I think you really need to look at the context of what the author of Hebrews here is doing. Because he's talking here about worship. Since we have confidence to enter the holy places by the blood of Jesus, he's not talking about the past, he's talking about the present. And since we have a great high priest over the house of God, you just mentioned that we still have a temple in which we worship. Let us draw near with a true heart and full assurance of faith. It's the same exact context that nearly every Christian, regardless of what they believe about the Sabbath, will point to when they say that believers should not neglect the meeting together as is the habit of some. Well, that meeting together is not arbitrary here. It's in the context of the public worship of God's people in the book of Hebrews through the mediation of Christ. And I think that when you look at this passage from that perspective, It becomes very difficult to just say, no, we're no longer in the Sabbath. The Sabbath no longer applies to believers today. I believe that's a very simplistic view, and it doesn't account for the whole of Scripture. It certainly doesn't account for what's going on in Hebrews here. That's a really good passage to kind of end on. We want to conclude this, and I want to say a couple of remarks about that. The first one is that it's important for people to not think about Sabbath-keeping as a bad thing. Why would anybody think of resting as a bad thing? I love to take naps, and I don't go, well, I have to take this nap. Maybe when I was a little kid I did, but now I like taking naps. I'm not saying that Sabbath is about resting in terms of sleeping, but we shouldn't view the commandments as a bad thing. Also, we realize that people can be very legalistic about Sabbath-keeping, but they can do that about any law. That doesn't make the law go away. But people can also be quite lawless about Sabbath-keeping, just like they can be about other commandments. And that's kind of the other side of this. We've used this kind of to be a case study to help you think about issues about the moral law and the continuity of Scripture and legalism. And helping us think more deeply about these things is important in order to help us get to Journey's End. We hope that you'll be with us again next week as we continue talking about these important topics. Journey's End is a production of the Reformed Baptist Church of Serving the Front Range. Our show is dedicated to helping Christians think deeply about their faith and helping them understand that the destination is the purpose of the journey. At www.ColoradoReformation.com you will find an increasing number of helpful tools. We have local churches in the southern and northern metro areas to assist you in understanding both the journey and the journey's end. Our worship services are Christ-centered and driven by the teachings of Scripture. This leads to our people seeking to emulate our Savior through kindness and humility. We are rooted in the historic creeds of Christianity and our traditions arose out of the Protestant Reformation. We invite you to head to our website www.coloradoreformation.com for more information. That's www.coloradoreformation.com. We look forward to being with you again next week. Thanks for listening. That was a great show! Into the water