The Forgotten Command: The Need For Repentance Concerning The Lord’s Day Sabbath.
In this series, I take our law homily from our church gathering each week (The law homily is where we read from the law of God and let His law examine our hearts so that we can be a tender-hearted and repenting people), and I post them here for your edification. Here is this week’s law homily on the prohibition against mental idolatry.
"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 of the Lord your God; in it, you shall not do any work, you or your son or your daughter, your male or your female servant or your cattle or your sojourner who stays with you. For in six days the Lord made the heavens and the earth, the sea and all that is in them, and rested on the seventh day; therefore the Lord blessed the sabbath day and made it holy. - Exodus 20:8-11
THE IMPORTANCE OF THE SABBATH WITH “MANY WORDS”
When a person wants to communicate something, they use words. When they are communicating something simple and uncontroversial, and there is broad agreement among communication partners, fewer words are usually chosen by the one communicating. But, when there is controversy, or when the speaker knows that the listeners are inclined to disagree with Him, the speaker will often use more words, especially if that speaker cares about you coming to His point of view and seeing things the way He sees them. The presence of more words indicates that the audience either has a knowledge gap (where they do not understand the command), a belief gap (where they do not believe the command), or a volitional gap (where they are unsure how they are to apply it). Thus, the more words a communicator uses on a particular idea, the more it allows us to see how difficult that idea is to receive from the listener.
With that, God appears to be relatively terse when giving His ten commandments. The most important statements ever uttered, the foundation of all law, occupy few words on a page. So few, in fact, they could be chiseled onto stone tablets and given to God's people to remember them forever. In this sense, God did not speak complicated concepts that you and I have trouble understanding. Like Mark Twain, it is not the commandments we fail to understand that haunt us, it is the ones we do understand that have become our accusers.
When God uttered words like: "Do not murder," or when He said: "Do not commit adultery," or when He said "Do not steal," He was communicating straightforward and common-sense commands that any thoroughgoing pagan could rightly say yes and amen to. In the Hebrew, each of those commands is only 2 words! Which lets us know that there should be broad agreement about them. In fact, every society on earth that has ever existed has believed that murder is wrong, that you should not sleep with another man's wife or husband, that honoring father and mother is the basis for a healthy society, and we could go on and on.
In this way, most of the ten commands are pretty short. Just a few words or phrases. For instance, 5 commands could be sent as a single tweet without upgrading to the blue check mark… 6 out of the 10 commandments only use 85 words combined! That is, commands 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, and 10 use only 85 total words to describe the entire foundation of the second table of the law, how man is supposed to relate to man, which should let us know something about them. The way we honor one another comprises simple, common-sense concepts that all societies on earth have generally agreed with. That does not mean we obey these commands, but at least we understand them, believe they are good and right, and struggle along trying to enact government, officers, and laws to uphold them. Only the most morally depraved and insane societies in history, like the one we are living in, have championed death, adultery, and the breakdown of the home. May God have mercy on this godless culture to which we are exiled.
However, regarding how we must relate with God, two commands are relatively short (1 and 3), and two are pretty long (2 and 4), demonstrating simple agreement concerning two of them and a hearty struggle for the other two. Take, for instance, the first command, which is only 5 words in the original Hebrew, and the third command comes in at a whopping 6 words, making them direct, to the point, and obvious statements for all who believe in God. In this way, it should not surprise us that these 2 short commands are much less controversial to the average believer than the two longer ones. This is simply the way language works. When God said, "You shall have no other gods before me." there is not a single Christian who is genuinely bought and paid for by Christ, who will object! When the Scriptures say do not take the name of the Lord your God in vain - some Christians may disagree on the degree to which this applies (e.g., can we lawfully say "gosh, golly, goodness gracious, etc.), but concerning whether we should honor the Lord's name as holy - all believers generally agree and will say yes and amen. But when it comes to the second and the fourth commandment, you arrive at the epicenter of Christian rebellion.
What do I mean? I mean that the most controversial of the Ten Commandments, the ones that most Christians are not only willing to disobey but willing to offer a thousand justifications for their disobedience, are the two that are the longest, which should not be a surprise to us at all. The second commandment alone has more words than the entire second table of the law. The fourth command has more words than 9 out of the 10 commandments combined! Why are there so many words in these two commands?
I think the answer is simple. Out of all of the things God told us to do, the easiest for us to rebel against are the laws dictating how we are to worship him. "Do not murder?" oh yes and amen. "Do not kill babies in the womb?" you betcha. But do not make an image of anything in heaven above or earth below… "well… That is not what that means." We ignore that God gave us these additional words because He loves us and knows our hearts are wicked. He knew that we would have a propensity for misunderstanding, and instead of noticing where God is doubling down and adding increased clarity to assuage our sinful conscience, we double down and make all kinds of excuses, saying these things no longer apply to us. We do it on the command to make no graven images and on the command to make the Sabbath day holy above all other days.
In the longest of all the commands, the fourth command, God directs us to make the Sabbath day holy. To sanctify this day above all others. To keep it holy, focused on worship, and refusing to use it for anything other than the worship of God or the fellowship of the saints. God tells us that He gave us six days to labor. And on the seventh day, for 24 consecutive hours, we are to cease from our laboring. We are to cease from industry. And we are to enjoy a sabbath and worshipful rest unto our God.
This is why the Westminster Larger Catechism says this:
A. The fourth commandment requireth of all men the sanctifying or keeping holy to God such set times as he hath appointed in his Word, expressly one whole day in seven; which was (Saturday) the seventh from the beginning of the world to the resurrection of Christ, and the first day of the week (Sunday) ever since, and so to continue to the end of the world; which is the Christian Sabbath, and in the New Testament called The Lord's Day.
All throughout church history, this was not a confusing command. Men and women violated it. They sinned against the Lord and refused to obey it. But, at least for most of Church history, men and women understood that all businesses, not just Chick-fil-A, should be closed on Sunday, that no one - except in scarce circumstances - should work on Sunday, and this is why almost all of Church history, wherever the name of Christ and His Gospel has taken root, men, and women would dedicate the entire day to the Lord and to worshiping Him.
In our day, in the debased and God-hating land that we are living in, Sabbath keeping has not only become regularly and continually violated, but today, the average Christian, much less the average Christian pastor, has not even considered the implications of how to obey this command! We sign our children up for sports, take them to baseball games on Sunday, stop by our local coffee shop and buy coffee on the way to work, and patronize businesses and restaurants, not even batting an eyelash on whether this is permissible behavior for Christian people.
CHRIST FULFILLED BUT DID NOT ABOLISH THE SABBATH
Many will say that Jesus fulfilled the Sabbath, and I would tell you you are right. But fulfilling something is not the same as abolishing it! Many will say that some of Jesus' sharpest critiques were against the sabbath keepers. And I would say He never condemned them for rightly keeping the Sabbath. He condemned them for keeping it wrongly. And we also sin today when we do not keep the Sabbath as the Lord intended!
With that, what did the Lord intend for us to do on the Sabbath? Should we prop up our feet in hammocks and refuse to do anything requiring energy and burning calories? No! Sabbath keeping is not an excuse for lethargy or laziness. Sabbath keeping is directed energy. It is a concentrated effort. It is laying down the tools of your vocation that you pick up on Monday and employ through Saturday and picking up the sacred tools that will allow you to labor for the Living God. This is why Jesus said that we must do good on the Sabbath. This is why we are commanded never to neglect the gathering of the saints, because a part of keeping the Sabbath holy is to go to church and be with the saints. If you are perpetrating evil on the Sabbath, like going on a Herodian killing spree or throwing babies in the Nile River like Pharoah, then you are, of course, violating the Sabbath and sinning against God. But here is the kicker, if you are choosing to sleep in, go to a ball game, play golf, mow the yard, patronize a restaurant, or do anything else you could do on any other day, you are also acting out evil and disobeying God as well. You are perpetrating sin. You are breaking the longest and most comprehensive command of them all. Why do we do this? Because we struggle, ye even loathe, to submit our lives under His total Lordship and authority.
We are in grave danger of being the kind of people who say in one breath, "To hell with the trannies… and God condemns the baby murders", and in another breath: "I have just had too much going on to go to church, and I need to stay home and rest." Do we not see the hypocrisy in this? The Sabbath was made by God for His people. He demonstrates His love for us by giving us an entire day to worship Him! A whole day to be with His people. Not an hour! Not 2 hours. 24 hours to do our work for the Lord. To pray, to fast, to worship, to sing, to listen, to read, to serve, and to leave behind the things of the world… On the Sabbath, we quit studying for the final exam to worship our Creator. We put away the balance sheet that will be awaiting us when we go into the office on Monday. We turn our phones on "silent" and refuse to answer work calls. We tell our boss we cannot work on Sunday because it is the Lord's Day. We turn the TV off and refuse to watch live games where other men violate the Sabbath for no good reason.
These examples tell us something. First, the world around us has no idea how to honor God. And second, it is a shame when the Christian church hides its lampstand in the bushel of the NFL, the local tavern, Walmart and Target, and any number of other places, refusing to show them the true, good, and beautiful way. Industry is thriving in America on the Lord's Day because the Lord's people are fueling it, participating in it, patronizing it, and supporting it. The Church of Jesus Christ in the United States complains and even runs a pastor out of town when the service too frequently lets out a few minutes late. If I miss my tee time, or if I miss my dinner reservation, or if I miss my party, then that pastor will have hell to pay. Why do we no longer number our days as the Lord says to number them?
THE GRAVITY OF SABBATH NEGLECT
Brothers and sisters, there are reasons to work on Sunday. If you work in a hospital or emergency room, there is plenty of grace for you. Jesus says, which one of you will not pull a sheep out of the pit if it falls in. And how much more valuable are humans than sheep. If people have heart attacks, gall bladder flair-ups, and things that need medical attention, then we do need men and women to work on those days. But there is a massive difference between a hospital worker laboring to save human life and ensuring we get our daily dunks on the way to church, our crispy chicken sandwich afterward, or whatever else.
The Lord has given us this day, His day, to obey Him, to worship Him, to be with the saints of God in corporate worship, and to cease our ordinary labors to serve Him. It was this sin that caused God to exile the nation of Israel into Babylon. This sin garnered some of the strongest rebukes from our Lord. And it is this sin that has proliferated in society, such that few even care or notice. Brothers and sisters, I would call us all to repent. There are six days to get our coffee and biscuits. There are six days to watch NBA playoff games. There are six days to take calls for work, to sleep in, or to take vacation days. But there is only one day to devote unto the Lord. There is only one 24-hour cycle in 7 to come to the Lord's house and worship Him. And there is only one day to be with the saints, serve, do good, have fellowship, and enjoy God, fraternal, and recreation to the glory of God. Like Mary, I call upon you to choose the better portion. I call upon you to repent. And, I call upon anyone who has racing thoughts, conjuring a mountain of objections to this command, to be still in this moment and confess your sins to God. There will be time to study, and I encourage you to study this hard. But now is our time for repentance.
CALL TO SABBATH REPENTANCE AND OBEDIENCE
Brothers and sisters, we must not treat this command lightly or dismiss it as irrelevant. God blesses those individuals and nations who honor the Sabbath, setting it apart as holy unto Him. We cannot expect revival to come to our hearts, both individually and corporately, if we stubbornly refuse obedience to this clear instruction from our Lord.
At the same time, we recognize that none of us can perfectly obey God's laws so as to earn our salvation. That is the error of legalism. Christ alone is our righteousness, and it is through His finished work on the cross that we find forgiveness for our Sabbath-breaking and every other sin.
However, we dare not swing to the opposite error of antinomianism - thinking we can willfully disobey God's commands since we are under grace. No, as those redeemed by Christ, we are called to repent, learn, grow, and develop patterns of obedience by the power of the Spirit at work within us (Ephesians 2:10).
So let us humbly confess our failure to keep the Sabbath holy as God intended. And having repented, let us then trust afresh in Christ's sufficient righteousness as we seek to walk in joyful, Spirit-empowered submission to this often neglected command. For in doing so, we will experience the refreshment, delight, and intimacy with our Lord that the Sabbath was designed to cultivate. Let us, the people of the Lord, call His Sabbath a delight once more (Isaiah 58:13).
