Sabbath Archives - Christ Church

The Power of Sabbath-Driven Work

Christ Church on October 18, 2020

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INTRODUCTION

In the beginning God created everything as sheer gift, and He made the man and the woman at the tail end of that project and gave them work to do. But the first full day that Adam and Eve enjoyed together was the seventh day, the day God rested from all of His labors (Gen. 2:1-3). While Adam and Eve had no sins to be justified for on that first Sabbath day, it still functions as a type of what God is like, what His grace is like, and where Christian work always comes from.

THE TEXT

If thou turn away thy foot from the sabbath, from doing thy pleasure on my holy day; and call the sabbath a delight, the holy of the Lord, honourable; and shalt honour him, not doing thine own ways, nor finding thine own pleasure, nor speaking thine own words:¹⁴Then shalt thou delight thyself in the Lord; and I will cause thee to ride 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 (Isaiah 58:13–14).

SUMMARY OF THE TEXT

The prophet rebukes the people for fasting and afflicting themselves in superstitious ways, trying to manipulate God (Is. 58:3-5). The fast that God actually loves is the one in which heavy burdens are lifted, prisoners are set free, the hungry are fed, and the naked are clothed (Is. 58:6-7). This is how light breaks forth in a land, and these are the people God loves to listen to (Is. 58:8-10). God will be with those who seek to meet real needs, and He will make their bones fat and they will be like watered gardens, like springs of water to their communities (Is. 58:11). This is where Reformation comes from, and they will be known for it (Is. 58:12). They call the Sabbath a delight and delight themselves in the Lord (Is. 58:13-14).

FROM THE RIVER TO THE ENDS OF THE EARTH

In Ezekiel 47, Ezekiel sees water running out over the threshold of the temple eastward (Ez. 47:1). That water runs out past the city gates, and after about a thousand cubits, it was ankle deep (Ez. 47:3). After another thousand cubits, it came up to a man’s waist (Ez. 47:4). And after another thousand, a man would have to swim through it (Ez. 47:5). Ezekiel is then told that those waters flow out to the desert and into the sea for the healing and life of the whole world (Ez. 47:6-12). Where does the water come from? And what is that water? The first question is easier to answer because the text tells us: the water is coming from the altar (Ez. 47:1). But the answer to the second question is available from the context: What does the water do? It heals everything it touches and gives life and fruitfulness (Ez. 47:8-9). And Jesus seems to give us a conclusive answer: “He that believeth in me, as the scripture hath said, out of his belly shall flow rivers of living water. But this spake he of the Spirit, which they that believe on Him should receive…” (Jn. 7:38-39). Jesus (and His death and resurrection) is the altar of the New Covenant, and the living water is the Holy Spirit filling and spilling out of believers, like watered gardens.

WORK THAT IS JUSTIFIED BY FAITH

How does the Holy Spirit spill out of believers and refresh the land? Through joyful obedience and good works. But there is a massive difference between ascetic-driven good works and Sabbath-driven good works. One is a putrid pond; the other a life-giving stream. All people, but especially religious people, have a bad habit of trying to impress God and other people with “fasting” that is actually an elaborate charade of self-service (Is. 58:3, Mt. 6:16-18). There is a do-gooding spirit that wearies the doer and everyone around them and makes a spectacle that God completely ignores (Is. 58:4-5). This doesn’t mean God doesn’t want His people loosing bands of wickedness, lifting heavy burdens, setting captives free, feeding the hungry, or clothing the naked. But God wants that good work driven by delighting in Him and His rest (Is. 58:13-14). In fact, there is no other kind of good work. God only notices the work that is driven by delight in Him. And do not turn that delight into some grim duty.

Paul makes the same point in Titus, insisting that believers be ready for every good work, careful to maintain good works, learning to maintain good works that are needed to be fruitful in every way (Tit. 3:1, 8, 14). But right in the middle of those exhortations is the kindness and love of God our Savior Who, not by works of righteousness which we have done, but according to His mercy, saved us, being justified by his grace, and made heirs of eternal life (Tit. 3:4-7). Justification by faith alone means that Christ’s obedience and death is received by God in our place as a free gift: our sins are imputed to Him and His righteous obedience is imputed to us, received by faith alone plus nothing (Gal. 3). Our job is to simply rest in it. But not only are we resting from our do-gooding to try to earn God’s favor or make up for our sins, we are actually resting in the fact that God has already accepted all of our works, our entire lives, for the sake of Christ alone (Eccl. 9:7, Tit. 3:5).

This means that all Christian work is done in joyful (restful) confidence since it is already accepted, already justified by His grace. This is why Christian work aims to loose burdens, feed the hungry, and clothe the naked. And while this certainly can and does include various forms of emergency aid and sacrifice, it ordinarily includes infrastructures of labor, business, savings accounts, budgets, and free markets. When God made the world and welcomed the first people into it, they had nothing, but what God prepared for them was a world full of good and profitable work. Just because it’s organized and planned and thoughtful toward the long term, doesn’t make it any less sacrificial or generous. Frequently it is more sacrificial and generous.

TOO GLAD

One of the slanders of the Puritans is that they were grumpy Sabbatarians and fussy prudes. But the reality is almost entirely the opposite. C.S. Lewis writes: “Whatever they [puritans] were they were not sour, gloomy, or severe; nor did their enemies bring any such charge against them… For More, a Protestant was one ‘drunk on the new must of lewd lightness of mind and vain gladness of heart’. Luther, he said, had made converts precisely because ‘he spiced all the poison’ with ‘liberty’. Protestantism was not too grim, but too glad to be true… Even when we pass on… to Calvin himself we shall find an explicit rejection of that ‘uncivil and froward philosophy’ which ‘alloweth us in no use of creatures save that which is needful, and going about (as it were in envy) to take from us the lawful enjoyment of God’s blessings… When God created food, ‘He intended not only the supplying of our necessities but delight and merriment’ (hilaritas)” (English Literature in the 16th Century, 34-35). If Christians are to be accused of anything in their work it should be that we are excellent at everything we do but far too happy.

CONCLUSION

The center of Sabbath keeping is the glad worship of the Triune God on the Lord’s Day: remembering the New Creation and the Greater Exodus accomplished by Jesus. But that joy really should overflow into our homes and lives in joyful celebration of all His good gifts. Understood rightly and under God’s providential blessing, there is an ever-increasing cycle of gladness set off by regeneration. In Christ, we are ushered into a new creation, and whereas the Old Creation ended in a day of rest, the New Creation begins with rest. So we work out of our rest in Christ. Under God’s blessing, you can truly do more in six days than in seven. While grim fear, threats, and envy may make people scramble, only glad grace drives good work.

Easter Sunday 2011: A Rest Remains

Gary Stedman on April 24, 2011

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Introduction

We are celebrating Easter, the day on which we commemorate the resurrection of the Lord Jesus from the dead. But not only did He rise, but all things were restored in Him, which is something we model, not only annually, but also on a weekly basis. We worship on the first day because we are privileged to have a weekly Easter, a weekly memorial of life from the dead. Eventually we may be able to shake the name Easter (a Germanic fertility goddess, for crying out loud), but in the meantime we can rejoice that the names of the baalim don’t mean much to us anymore (Hos. 2:17). Thursday is Thor’s Day, and who cares anymore? This is an endearing quirk of English- speaking peoples—everywhere else Christians have the good sense to speak of Pascha. During the transition, if someone objects that Easter used to be a pagan name, we can reply that this seems fitting—we used to be pagans. But now we are Christians, and Christ is risen.

The Text

“There remaineth therefore a rest?? to the people of God. For he that is entered into his rest, he also hath ceased from his own works, as God did from his” (Heb. 4:9-10).

Summary of the Text

The Scriptures in the older testament speak of different rests—all of which the believer is invited to enter into on the basis of faith. God created the world and He rested. God promised Abraham the land of Canaan, which was another rest. And God promised that Jesus would come to bring an ultimate salvation rest. This means that believers throughout history were invited to enter into the antitypical rest of Jesus by approaching every lesser rest with the eye of true and living faith. But now that Jesus died and rose in history, this does not mean that we have no tangible rests to work through any more. No, God helped the Old Testament saints look forward to the resurrection, and He helps us look back to it. There remains a Sabbaath-rest for the people of God (v. 9). But why? Verse 10 often throws us because of the dense cluster of pronouns. We still have a Sabbath-rest because “he” has entered a rest, and has ceased from “his own works,” in just the same way that God did at the creation (v. 10). We need to fill this out.

It is sometimes assumed that the he here is a repentant sinner, ceasing from the futile labor of trying to save himself. But why would we compare the ungodly labors of self-righteousness to the godly work of creation? Why would we compare a foolish sinner to a wise God? Why would we compare an incomplete and botched work to a glorious work that was fully completed? It seems like a really bad comparison.

But what if the He is understood as Jesus? Jesus has entered a rest, just as God did. Jesus recreated the world, just as God created the world. Jesus said it was finished, and God looked at what He had made and said that it was very good. Jesus ceased from His labor of recreating the heavens and earth, and entered into the reality of the new creation. God labored for six days and nights and rested. Jesus labored for three days and nights and rested. Therefore, the people of God still have a Sabbath rest. Therefore, we worship God on the first day of the week (the day He entered His rest) instead of on the seventh day of the week.

A Regulative Reality

First, some background. We do not have the right to worship God with whatever pretty thing comes into our heads. The apostle Paul elsewhere calls this tendency “will worship” (Col. 2:23). In Reformed circles, the desire to honor this truth has been called the “regulative principle”—that which God does not require of us in worship is therefore prohibited. All Protestants need to be regulativists of some stripe, and the best expression of this principle that I have found is this one: “Worship must be according to Scripture.”

But there is a strict version of the regulative principle which is impossibly wooden, and it is not surprising that there are many inconsistencies. We can’t have a piano, because they are not expressly required. We can’t sing songs by Charles Wesley because he and other hymn-writers are not authorized. You get the picture. But we also have no express warrant for serving communion to women, or . . . worshiping God on Sunday.

A Few Hints

The most we have are a few hints. John tells us that there was a specific day that he called “the Lord’s Day” (Rev. 1:10). The apostle Paul tells the Corinthians that they should set money aside “on the first day” (1 Cor. 16:2). We are told of an instance where the disciples gathered on the first day of the week to break bread and Paul taught them (Acts 20:7). But if we are looking for express warrant, this is thin soup.

The Real Reason

How does God require things of us? What does He do to get the message to us? Are His actions authoritative? Well, yes. The material universe was created on Sunday (Gen. 1:5). The Jews had been observing the seventh day Sabbath for centuries. God appears to have told the Jews that the seventh day observance would be an everlasting covenant (Lev. 24:8). But then the day shifted from the seventh to the first without any notable controversy. How could that be? What could account for this? Nothing less than the total recreation of all things. Behold, Jesus said. I make all things new (Rev. 21:5; 2 Cor. 5:17). He came back from the dead on the first day of the week (Mark 16:9; John 20:1), meaning that this was the day on which the reCreator entered His rest. Jesus made a point of appearing to His disciples on this same day (John 20:19). His next appearance to them was a week later, on the following Sunday (John 20:26). The Holy Spirit was poured out fifty days later, also on Sunday (Acts 2:1). And in the main, the Christian church has never looked back.

Not one Christian in ten thousand could give a decent biblical defense of our practice of worshiping God on the first day, and yet here we all are. Look at us go. Can we account for this through an appeal to the stupidity of blind, inexorable tradition? No—we should actually attribute it to the fact that two thousand years ago God overhauled everything, raising His Son from the dead in broad daylight. Jesus entered His rest, and consequently we may rest and rejoice before Him.

Reformation for the World

Christ Church on October 26, 2008

Introduction

One of the great blessings that God has bestowed on us is a community of Sabbath celebration. As we commemorate Reformation Day and All Saints Day, this is a good opportunity to remember what our feasts are for.

The Text

“Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy…” (Ex. 20:8-11)

Sabbath and Feasting Are for the World

Sabbath rest has from the beginning meant giving rest. As the command makes clear, the requirement to rest extended to family, visitors, and even to animals (Ex. 20:10). The Sabbath principle also applied to the land (Ex. 23:10-11, Lev. 25). Debts were to be cancelled every seven years (Dt. 15:1-2). Furthermore, in the 50th year (the seventh sabbatical cycle of seven years), a year of jubilee was proclaimed which required the release of slaves, the return of inheritance, and rest for the land (Lev. 25:8-17). The year of jubilee is in many ways the supreme expression of the Sabbath principle, and it began with the sounding of the trumpet on the Day of Atonement (Lev. 25:9-10) which celebrated the forgiveness of Israel’s sin, the gift of the covenant, freedom, release from slavery, and mercy. As we have rightly emphasized over the years, Sabbath means feasting. The Sabbath was one of the feasts of the Old Covenant (Lev. 23:1-3). But these feasts were not merely for the enjoyment of those who threw them and their friends. The Feast of Weeks was for the fatherless, the widows, and the strangers (Dt. 16:10-12). The Feast of Tabernacles was for the fatherless, the strangers, and the widows (16:13-14). And this emphasis was to be a way of life for Israel because they had once been slaves in Egypt (Dt. 24:10-22). The offering of firstfruits and tithes was likewise for the world (Dt. 14:27-29, 26:11-15). The Jewish leaders who established Purim also clearly understood the Sabbath principle (Est. 9:18-22).

Let Us Keep the Feast

It is no accident then that as the early church grew and multiplied, at the center of that covenant community was the doctrine of the apostles, fellowship, breaking of bread, and prayers (Acts 2:42). At the center of the early church was worship, the Sabbath Feast of the New Covenant. And because this Sabbath Feast was the Old Covenant feasts all grown up and glorious, it’s not surprising that there was almost immediately problems distributing the bread to the widows (Acts 6:1). When the gospel breaks out in a city, one of the greatest challenges should be figuring out how to care for all the orphans and widows. This challenge appears to be the origin of the deaconate, and immediately following the close of the canon, we find deacons assisting with the Lord’s Supper and

taking the bread and other alms out to the poor of the church and community (e.g. Tertullian). This is the probable connection for why the deacons came to be primarily liturgical assistants in the middle ages rather than leaders of mercy ministry. But in the Reformation this was recovered by all the major reformers. Worship – and the Lord’s Supper in particular – was for the world. The gifts of bread and wine and milk and honey that were placed on the table during the offertory were alms for the poor. When we break the one loaf here, it is meant to be multiplied to feed thousands.

Conclusions and Applications

As we celebrate Reformation Day and All Saints Day, we do so as people who are thankful and grateful all the way down to the ground. This is because we understand the gospel, and when we do, we immediately see our mission. There is a rich legacy of mercy ministry that has been handed down to us in the Protestant Reformation. Hand in hand with the recovery of the gospel and faithful worship was the recovery of mercy ministry.

As we pursue this calling it must be remembered that part of this means not carelessly creating more strangers, fatherless, and widows. There is no either/or dichotomy here. The command is still there to love your wife, love your children, and love your neighbor. But the promise is that there will be more oil. There will be more than enough bread to feed them all.

The Feast of the Lord (King’s Cross)