The Joy and Power of the Sabbath
In Genesis chapters 1―3 we have the divine revelation which frames, and is constitutive of, all human existence. Included in this terrestrial constitution we find the following important declaration:
There are three key aspects to this text:
The seventh day is to be sanctified and set apart―that is, different from the other six days of the week.
The point of difference centres around its sabbatical nature (“sabbath” day, from the Hebrew word, 'shabbat' which means to cease or desist); thus the seventh day is a day of rest from the work and responsibilities of the other six days.
The day is blessed by God. Thus, all who enter into it, partake in the divine blessing inscribed into the day.
Later, a fourth aspect was added: part of the rest on the seventh day with to be able to enter into public corporate worship. It is inevitable that for corporate worship to occur, the community must be at rest from other responsibilities. The sabbath institution enables that to occur.
In an earlier article (ChnMind 1.5: Creation: It's the Process, Stupid) we argued that the way God created the world sets out constitutional patterns which shape everything. God's own resting on the seventh day, after the completion of the work of creation, and setting the day apart is another example.
Now, within God Himself there is no passage or sequence of time. Time is a created dimension. It, too, has been created out of nothing. Time has not been an eternal pre-existent dimension. It rather a necessary constituent of creaturehood―part of the warp and woof of the finite universe. This is what Jesus alludes to when He states (precisely whilst engaged in controversy over the Sabbath): “My Father is working until now and I myself am working.” (John 5:17) The Sabbath is an institution that has been created for man: for his benefit, to enable him to function in the creation and towards God, as God intended.
The Fourth Commandment, which prescribes for mankind the blessing and duty of the sabbath rest, refers back to God's pattern in creating the world as the reason for resting on the seventh day. “Remember the sabbath day to keep it holy. Six days you shall labour and do all your work, . . . 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.” (Exodus 20: 8ff) In other words, according to the pattern laid down by God, so we are to be bound―and mankind is to imitate Him, as His representative in the world. Our lives are to be characterised by six days of labour in which we do all our work; the seventh is to be a day of blessed rest.
Sometimes amongst the citizens of Jerusalem there are suggestions that the Sabbath is unduly restrictive: the command “stops me from doing what I want to do”. But the Sabbath command cuts to the heart of our faith―as you would expect.
In the first place, it establishes the lordship and dominion of God over our time and days upon the earth. We are commanded to redeem the time, in Christ. One of the first manifestations of rebellion against God is resentment towards His prescriptive commands over my use of time. “Surely I can organize my life the way I want to!”, we secretly assert. But, no, we cannot, for God is the Lord of all our days and ways. If a believer will not acknowledge and submit to the Sabbath institution, he will struggle to order all his life unto God. His service will be broken and compromised from the very start.
If you want to organise your own time, as it seems good to you, God will soon be organised out of your life and be excluded from your counsels.
In the second place, the sabbath command sets out the fundamental responsibility of the six days. In those days of the week, we are to do all our work. Believers that struggle with resting on the seventh day are usually found to be unfaithful, lazy, or not busy enough during the six days of the week. Those, by contrast, whose lives are filled with hard work in carrying out their holy callings, in labour, business, enterprise, school, home, family, charitable work, and community come to the seventh day with grateful anticipation of the opportunity to rest.
Thirdly, the sabbath commandment sets a divine limit upon our duties and responsibilities. The Bible warns that overwork is a great danger. There are always needs; there is always more that could be done. “It is vain for you to rise up early, to retire late, to eat the bread of painful labours, for He gives to His beloved even in his sleep.” (Psalm 127: 2) But the Scriptures indicate that all of the labour which God truly has given us can be performed within the six days. God will not require us to maintain respsonsibilitities that cannot be fulfilled within six days of work. If we find that we cannot carry out all the responsibilities we have taken on in the six days―that is, “do all our work” as God did in the first six days―then it is a strong indication that we have taken on some duties beyond the leading of God. It is necessary that we re-evaluate and cut back.
Fourthly (and following on from the point above) the sabbath commandment prevents us from becoming enslaved to the creation. We all know people who are working themselves into an early grave. Their lives have become a form of self-imposed slavery. The sabbath institution prevents us from living solely for the world's duties and responsibilities. It enables us to lift our hearts and minds up to God, to commune with Him. No human institution—no government, no employer, no community group—has any rights to prevent us observing the sabbath rest. To claim such rights and attempt to interdict the sabbath rest is to rebel against the Almighty. (Note that within the Fourth Commandment itself there is an overt inclusion of servants and strangers in the blessing of sabbath rest.)
The aspects of redemption and liberation represented within the sabbath are revealed very clearly in the second recital of the Ten Commandments. After God had delivered our forefathers from slavery in Egypt, He reiterated the Ten Commandments, as part of the great renewal of the Covenant before they entered into the land promised to Abraham and his descendants: “Observe the sabbath day to keep it holy . . . . Six days you shall labour and do all your work, but the seventh day is a sabbath of the Lord your God. . . . You shall remember that you were a slave in the land of Egypt, and the Lord your God brought you out of there by a mighty hand and by an outstreteched arm; therefore, the Lord your God commanded you to observe the sabbath day.” (Deuteronomy 5:12ff) As a result of being delivered from slavery, the sabbath was restored to our fathers. To the extent that the sabbath rest is taken away from us we become enslaved again.
Fifthly, the sabbath is to be the highlight of the week. Everyone has experienced the blessedness that comes from stopping work for the day, laying down tools, and returning home to rest. The sabbath extends this blessing for a whole day. It gathers up all the effort and labour of the previous six days—as it were—and lays it before the Lord as a holy offering, as a spiritual service of worship (Romand 12: 1,2). On that day, we are to rest in God and with God, rejoicing with Him in our accomplishments, with great thankfulness and joy. It is a day of comfort, consolation, and celebration. Just as God completed all His work in creation, and reviewed it, and declared it to be “very good”, on the first sabbath day, all that goodness was celebrated, and man shared in the celebration with God. Thus the sabbath is a day of holy worship, of warm human fellowship, sharing in the richest food we have, entering into the peaceful rest of God and His blessings.
Naturally, the sabbath recreates us for the next six days of labour—which are, in turn, all the more meaningful and purposeful because of the sabbath fellowship with the Lord and with one another in the blessed community of the redeemed.
While the sabbath remains, Jerusalem will never be cast down. There is too much heavenly joy and power released into the hearts of God's people making them irrepressible. In 1935 Stalin is reported to have once cynically replied, when being asked to encourage Roman Catholicism within the Soviet Union to propitiate the Pope: “The Pope. How many divisions has he got?” The divisions of the Lord of Hosts are legion and even the very Gates of Hell shall not hold out against them. The sabbath and all that it represents is one of the secrets of their strength.
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