Congregation of the Lord Jesus Christ,
Two weeks ago now I preached to you on the need to observe a Sabbath day. And it was not my intention originally to return straight away to the matter of how we observe the Sabbath. However, I have requests to do so. And having given the matter further prayer and thought, and taking into account the fact that this is an area of the Christian life that really is under assault (And I use the word assault deliberately because I believe this Lets-not-take-the-Sabbath-too-seriously-idea is a very successful strategy of the evil one to weaken our relationship with God and each other and the example of faith we set for our children), we return today to the matter of how we observe the Christian Sabbath.
And because not everyone here today was here last time, let’s begin with a brief review. Our question last time was Are we, as NT believers, still to observe a Sabbath? And we answered that question by noting that what we are talking about here is a solemn command of God. And the coming of Christ did not downgrade the 4th Commandment to just a guide or a suggestion; it is still a solemn command of God. And what we saw also is that while the argument of many as to why we are no longer bound to observe a Sabbath is that Jesus has fulfilled the 4th commandment, the truth is that this actually adds a greater depth to the reasons why we should observe a Sabbath! And we saw this especially as we considered the redemption argument that God provides in these verses; for while the Israelites were to use this day to remember rescue from Egypt, we are to use this day to remember the redemption that is ours in Jesus. And this is why we observe this day on resurrection Sunday and not on Saturday as the Jews did. And so we concluded by saying that as we look to Jesus, who is the Lord of the Sabbath, and who rose victorious on Sunday, the Lord’s Day, we have every reason to observe a Christian Sabbath.
So in these verses in Deuteronomy, GOD SPEAKS TO HIS PEOPLE ABOUT SABBATH OBSERVANCE. And having already seen that God PRESCRIBES a SOLEMN COMMAND and that He PROVIDES SEVERAL ARGUMENTS for keeping His command, today we see that He also PRESENTS SPECIFIC INSTRUCTIONS about how to keep His command.
And the specific instructions are that we keep the day holy, as you see at the beginning of the verse, “Observe the Sabbath day, to keep it holy,” which means that we and our sons and daughters and man-servants, etc, “shall not do any work” on that day. And these are the two things we focus on with the rest of our time – keeping the day holy and not working on that day.
I. But we take them in reverse order beginning with NOT WORKING ON THAT DAY.
A. And we start by considering three passages of the Bible that have to with the command not to do any work on the Sabbath Day.
1. The first we find in NUMBERS 15:32 (The book before Deut. p. 124).
While the people of Israel were in the wilderness, they found a man gathering sticks on the Sabbath day. And those who found him gathering sticks brought him to Moses and Aaron and to all the congregation. They put him in custody, because it had not been made clear what should be done to him. And the LORD said to Moses, “The man shall be put to death; all the congregation shall stone him with stones outside the camp.” And all the congregation brought him outside the camp and stoned him to death with stones, as the LORD commanded Moses.
So you can see that this was a very serious matter – you shall not do any work on the Sabbath day meant NO work on the Sabbath. And to disobey, at that time, meant the death penalty!
2. But turn secondly to NEHEMIAH 13:15 (OT. Just before the Psalms. p. 409).
In those days I saw in Judah people treading winepresses on the Sabbath, and bringing in heaps of grain and loading them on donkeys, and also wine, grapes, figs, and all kinds of loads, which they brought into Jerusalem on the Sabbath day. And I warned them on the day when they sold food. Tyrians also, who lived in the city, brought in fish and all kinds of goods and sold them on the Sabbath to the people of Judah, in Jerusalem itself! Then I confronted the nobles of Judah and said to them, “What is this evil thing that you are doing, profaning the Sabbath day? Did not your fathers act in this way, and did not our God bring all this disaster on us and on this city? Now you are bringing more wrath on Israel by profaning the Sabbath.” As soon as it began to grow dark at the gates of Jerusalem before the Sabbath, I commanded that the doors should be shut and gave orders that they should not be opened until after the Sabbath. And I stationed some of my servants at the gates, that no load might be brought in on the Sabbath day. Then the merchants and sellers of all kinds of wares lodged outside Jerusalem once or twice. But I warned them and said to them, “Why do you lodge outside the wall? If you do so again, I will lay hands on you.” From that time on they did not come on the Sabbath. Then I commanded the Levites that they should purify themselves and come and guard the gates, to keep the Sabbath day holy. Remember this also in my favor, O my God, and spare me according to the greatness of your steadfast love.
And notice here that working on the Sabbath is cited as one of the reasons that God brought disaster on the Jews and Jerusalem and sent the people into exile. So again we see that this is a very serious matter at the heart of God’s covenant relationship with His people.
3. But turn lastly in this connection to LUKE 23:54 (NT – Third Book/Gospel. p.884). Jesus has died and His body has been taken from the cross and laid in a tomb. We read:
It was the day of Preparation, and the Sabbath was beginning. The women who had come with him from Galilee followed and saw the tomb and how his body was laid. Then they returned and prepared spices and ointments. On the Sabbath they rested according to the commandment. But on the first day of the week, at early dawn, they went to the tomb, taking the spices they had prepared.
Now, you would think that to anoint the body of Jesus with spices and ointments was a good work to do, right? But though they had prepared these spices already, these women “rested according to the commandment.” God said do not work on the Sabbath. And so, they waited till the morning after the Sabbath to go to the tomb to anoint the body of Jesus. Even though what they had in mind to do was a good thing, there were better things for them to focus on on the Sabbath Day.
B. So, the command is that on the Sabbath Day “you shall not do any work.” And we have seen the serious consequences for breaking this commandment and how it was rightly understood and observed in Bible times. So the question now is What does this mean for you and me today? WHAT DOES THE 4TH COMMANDMENT LOOK LIKE IN 2016? And the answer is that “You shall not do any work” on that day means, in 2016 ………………… you shall not do any work on that day!
1. And this is so, firstly and most patently, because this is God’s command; to those He has redeemed by the blood of Jesus Christ and who will one day enjoy the fullness that the Christian Sabbath points forward to in heaven, God says, on the Sabbath “you shall not do any work.”
2. But turn with me now to ISAIAH 58:13-14, which is where we see the PURPOSE of ceasing from our ordinary work (OT. p. 618).
If you turn back your foot from the Sabbath, from doing your pleasure on my holy day, and call the Sabbath a delight and the holy day of the LORD honorable; if you honor it, not going your own ways, or seeking your own pleasure, or talking idly; then you shall take delight in the LORD, and I will make you ride on the heights of the earth; I will feed you with the heritage of Jacob your father, for the mouth of the LORD has spoken.
And just keep your Bibles open here because we will return to these verses in a moment. But what we see here is that we cease from our ordinary work in order to DELIGHT IN THE LORD. Another way of saying this is that we are to cease from our ordinary work in order to enjoy Sunday or to celebrate Sunday. OK? This is not a negative command but a positive command. The Lord wants us to be able to enjoy Him and each other in a very special and focused and celebratory way. So this requires us to let go of our ordinary daily work concerns.
a. Let me ILLUSTRATE this for you: There will likely be some among us, probably men, who have agreed to go on a family holiday at a busy time for work. So we go on the holiday with the proviso that we keep the phone on so we can be called by work or that we be allowed to spend the morning in a café with wi-fi so we can do all our email stuff, or even that the campsite is close to town by so we can zip into the office each morning and then return to the campsite in the afternoon. Well, I am fairly confident that if I were to ask your wife or your children if they enjoyed their time with you on that holiday that their reply would be? No. That is no holiday. That is not being with your wife or family to enjoy some time with them. To truly focus on them you have to cease from that.
b. Or, have you ever had the scenario when you are telling someone something really personal or important to you and you then ask them what they think you should doand they reply, “Aw, sorry, uhm, what did you ask? I got a little distracted by the TV.” That hurts, doesn’t it. Am I that unimportant that you can’t give me your undivided attention?
c. Well, God requires our undivided attention on the Christian Sabbath. And the only way that you will truly be able to observe this day by keeping it holy and enjoy it and delight in it and celebrate it is if you cease from your ordinary work.
C. Now, before we move on to the need to keep it holy, there are THREE QUALIFICATIONS OR SUB-POINTS that need to be made in connection with ceasing from our ordinary work.
1. The first is that it is not possible for everyone to cease from their ordinary daily labour on Sunday. There is some work that we call WORK OF NECESSITY.
a. I am working, for example. In fact the joke says that ministers only work on Sundays, right? Ha Ha! But my work is a necessary part of how we all get to observe the Christian Sabbath.
b. And Jesus healed people on the Sabbath Day. And so, broadly speaking, it is necessary for those who work in the health care sector to work also on Sunday.
c. And Police officers, firemen, utility suppliers and maintenance staff, farmers, soldiers, and round-the-clock industries are some examples of types of work that cannot stop for 24 hours.
d. So it is quite right for believers to choose those occupations knowing that they may not be able to cease from their ordinary work to observe a Sabbath.
e. However, if you are involved in one of those occupations, you should try and minimize what you do on the Sabbath, as much as it depends on you.
f. And young people, if you are thinking about career options, you need to think this through very carefully. You see, in a 24/7 industrialized economy such as ours, more and more career options will supposedly require you to work on Sundays. Even hospitals, for example, which are places of life and death emergencies, are driven as much by economics on Sunday, in terms of what they do and do not do, as they are by what is necessary. And the same is so with factories and the transport industry, for example. So pray about this and seek the counsel of your parents and your elders as to whether what you are thinking about doing really is a necessary work.
g. And let me give you this piece of advice also, even when you sign a contract for holiday work or a part-time job at Farmers, for example, when you are young, make sure it says on your contract that you will not be available to work on Sundays. It is easier to have that discussion right up front than have to be asked and have to say no several times later on.
h. And finally, if you have a job that requires you to work on Sunday that is not necessary work, then you ought to leave that job and seek other employment. Proverbs 19:16 says, “Whoever keeps the commandment keeps his life.” And Jesus said, “Seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things will be added to you.”
i. So there is some work that is necessary work that may continue on the Sabbath.
2. But the second sub-point in relation to not working on the Sabbath is something I wrote about in last week’s bulletin. In the previous Sabbath sermon we noted five arguments for keeping the commandment that God provides in the 4th Commandment. But one sister very correctly and helpfully pointed out that there is in fact a sixth argument, which we might call the ‘LOVE YOUR NEIGHBOUR’ argument. You see, the command requires that you cease from work and your son and daughter and man servant and ox, etc “so that [they] may rest, as you do.” So when you shut your office or building site or scale back operations on the farm to a bare minimum, you are making it possible for your staff also to rest. And on the other side of the coin, when you go to a café or a petrol station or The Warehouse on Sunday then you require others to be working there to serve you. So we cease from our work because we are grateful to God for redeeming us in Christ and because we are to love Him with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength, and we do all that we can to make it possible for others to enjoy a Sabbath rest because we are to love our neighbour as ourselves. So we are to cease from work and make it possible for others also to rest.
3. And thirdly and finally in connection with not working on the Sabbath, and here we return again to Isaiah 58, notice the mention in v13 of “not going your own ways or seeking your own pleasure, or talking idly.” And what these words help us to see is that it is not just work that is in view in the 4th Commandment but also our ordinary HOBBIES and RECREATIONS and PASTIMES and SPORT AND LEISURE activities.
a. And if it hasn’t started already, here is definitely where we start to nervously twitch in our seats, right? Joey Pipa in his book on the Lord’s Day mentions that on several occasions after preaching about Lord’s Day observance he has had people come up to him and say that they would never submit their children to such torture. So Dr. Pipa questioned them about their Sabbath memories and found that they consisted of “morning and evening church services, family worship, and a long list of things the children could not do.” And I remember a similar conversation with a friend once who added that that long list of things the children could not do had as much to do with being quiet while Dad had his Sunday sleep as it did with anything else.
b. Well, let’s remind ourselves here that our main point in connection with Isaiah 58 is that God’s design for the Sabbath is that we delight in it and in Him. Fathers, your calling is to help your children delight in the Lord on the Sabbath. So if you have memories of Sabbath ‘torture’ such that in your house the day now consists of you sleeping while your wife is at the café with her girlfriend and your oldest watches a movie on a laptop in a bedroom and another is at the beach with his mates and your youngest has a friend around and they spend the whole afternoon in the park, well, you and they are going your own way and seeking your own pleasure and talking idly; you are not delighting in the Lord on the Sabbath. To delight in the Sabbath and to enjoy it and to celebrate it presupposes that we devote the day to God and to His people. This day gives you the opportunity to do things you often don’t have time to do in a focused way during the week.
c. And the list of activities I am about to give you is not a list of the only things you can do or everything you have to do, and there may even be things in the list that you would not choose to do. I simply give them as an alternative to the type of wasted Sabbath I mentioned earlier. So attend both services of worship, do some Bible study and meditation and memorization, prepare for the Bible study you will attend during the week, do some singing, visit believers who can’t usually get to church, help your young children act out a Bible story, look at their Sunday school or catechism work with them, go to youth group, walk in the park or on the beach with your family or others and deliberately talk about God’s goodness and His beautiful creation and salvation in Christ, pray with your children, reflect on the sermons, watch a few instructional or devotional videos on the computer, read a good book, read a good book out loud with your children or your flatmates, read Faith in Focus, do some baking that you can deliver to the family who have just had a baby, practise regular hospitality so that you are with other believers or they are with you. These are some of the ways we can delight in the Lord on the CS.
II. And brothers and sisters, young people and boys and girls, what we are talking about here is where we naturally slide from talking about not working on the Christian Sabbath into the command to KEEP IT HOLY, our final and much briefer point.
As we return to our text in Deuteronomy 5 and v14, I wonder if you have ever paused to think about the significance of the mention of THE OX, THE DONKEY OR ANY OF YOUR ANIMALS ALSO NOT DOING ANY WORK? You see, if you don’t put a yoke on an ox or saddle bags on a donkey, they don’t have to do their usual work and they can get some physical rest, but that’s where it stops, isn’t it. Ox and donkeys don’t then go to church or do Bible study! I know there are some churches that have bring your pet along for a blessing services, but I am pretty sure that has nothing to do with the 4th Commandment! Those animals are not there out of a desire to observe a Sabbath Day! And today, if you don’t fire up your tractor or your nail gun or you don’t pick up your scientific calculator or your pencil case or you leave the shop closed so your non-Christian employees don’t have to work on Sunday, those tools and implements and people get some physical rest, but that’s as far as it goes. But the believer who knows that his or her sins are forgiven in Christ, and that he or she is an adopted child of God in Christ, and that one day he or she will be welcomed into heaven’s glory with Christ, rejoices that he or she has been set free from their ordinary work in order to keep the day holy. So you and I observe the Christian Sabbath by keeping it holy as we cease from our ordinary labours and as we enjoy the opportunity for physical rest that ceasing from our ordinary labours makes possible, but also and especially as we actively pursue those things that strengthen our walk with the Lord and our fellowship with one another and our enjoyment of the salvation that is ours in Jesus Christ. In Isaiah 58 we read that we are to turn back our feet from the Sabbath and from doing our own pleasure on God’s holy day and instead that we are to call the Sabbath a delight and the holy day of the Lord honourable. There were some believers among those who received the Book of HEBREWS who didn’t see the need to gather with the Lord’s people for worship or fellowship. But the Spirit of the Lord through the author of the book said, “Let us consider how to stir up one another to love and good works, not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another, and all the more as you see the Day drawing near.” Observing the Christian Sabbath is not simply about emptying the day of our ordinary work but also about filling it with the sorts of things we have discussed. And so, as we said last time, as we look to Jesus, the Lord of the Sabbath, who rose victorious on Sunday, the Lord’s Day, we have every reason to observe the Sabbath Day. And we do this as we empty the day of our ordinary work and recreation and fill it with worship, with fellowship, and with works of necessity and mercy. For then we shall take delight in the Lord. Amen.