Word of Salvation – Vol.48 No.4 – January 2003

 

Re-discovering the Lord’s Day (1)

Sermon by Rev M P Geluk

on Lord’s Day 38 (Q&A 103 Heid Cat) & Exodus 20:8-11

 

Scripture Readings:  Genesis 2:1-3; Hebrews 4:1-13

Suggested Hymns:   BoW 84; 119a; 171; 160

 

Congregation of our Lord Jesus Christ.

Let me begin this sermon on the fourth commandment with quoting the opening paragraph from a book called “Practising Our Faith”, by Dorothy Bass:

“How often people today cry out in desperation or despair, ‘I just don’t have enough time!’ There is so much to do: earn a living, fulfil a vocation, nurture relationships, care for dependants, exercise, and clean the house. Moreover, we hope to maintain sanity while doing all this, and to keep on growing as faithful and loving people at the same time. We are finite, and the demands seem too great, the time too short.”

Do you identify with that quote? More and more people are realising that work hours and stress levels are up, and sleep and family time are down for all classes of people. Wives having a job outside the home come home tired, but there’s still the cooking and housework to be done. The weekends are for washing and ironing. Husbands are not always at home to help with these chores because they may do overtime or have a second job in trying to pay off the mortgage. Single parents have to do everything by themselves and can scarcely manage.

Then, with all that on your plate, the married folk are often reminded by some research or survey that you have to be a good lover in order to keep your marriage healthy. And you must not forget to give your kids quality time or else they will be deprived and become a problem to society later on. Your children and advertisements demand that you spend more money, which means you can’t afford to earn less. Everyone says you need a computer and subscribe to the Internet, otherwise you and the kids are left behind. You always seem to need more things and it all costs money, and therefore there is pressure on you to earn more.

To allow you to do the shopping whilst working full-time, some shops stay open all night. To offer you some relaxing moments, entertainment options are available around the clock. If it’s late or you’re too tired too cook, fast food outlets are the answer. Our economy and society are gobbling up nearly all our available time. But whilst it’s doing that, it also makes it possible for us to keep going in this frantic way by providing for our needs instantly. We’re being run off our feet – but don’t panic, all sorts of things are available to you while you’re on the go.

What are we to do in order to reduce stress, prevent a heart attack, or a nervous breakdown? Some say that you must learn to relax, but who has the time? Others advise regular exercise, but that’s hard to do when you’re tired from doing everything else. Again, others insist you need a good night’s sleep or a holiday, but so often there’s something else that needs to be done first.

Let’s face it, life in today’s society is lived at a hectic pace and it goes on seven days a week. In this non-stop cycle of activities, have you not realised that something has gone missing? We have lost, or are very close to losing, the Lord’s Day. It’s being crowded out. Society no longer recognises it and more and more places of business and commerce are treating all days alike.

So as we turn our attention to the fourth commandment, which is about God’s day, then let’s think about how to REDISCOVER THE LORD’S DAY.

When we speak of the Lord’s Day, then we need to say, of course, that all the days of the week belong to the Lord. But with the fourth commandment God has set a day aside which provides rest from work as well as giving us an opportunity to be refreshed spiritually, which comes from worshipping Him. These blessings from God are beneficial to us, but we’re in danger of losing them. Therefore, we speak of rediscovering the Lord’s Day.

1. The first steps in this re-discovery

Dorothy Bass, whom I quoted already, speaks about the Sabbath as a gift from God, which, when we unwrap it and learn to see its usefulness, will bring about our well-being. That’s makes sense because all of God’s commandments are for our well-being. Whenever resentment crops up against God’s commandments, then either we have not understood the commandment properly and are working with a faulty interpretation of it, or we just don’t like obeying God, which means we love sin more.

When God commanded Israel to remember the Sabbath day by keeping it holy, then He was telling them to do something that would make their life more enjoyable. Therefore, if our Sunday observance fills us with negative thoughts and unpleasant feelings, then either we just don’t like God for telling us what to do, or we have misunderstood His loving purpose in giving us this commandment. One of the first steps in re-discovering the beauty of the Lord’s Day is not to think of it as a day on which the signs go up that say: don’t do this, don’t do that. Thinking of the Lord’s Day as a day of negative rules and restrictions will make us and our children dislike the day. And that’s sad because God meant the day to be a blessing.

Another step towards a renewed appreciation of the Lord’s Day is to understand its connection with some high points of God’s dealings with us His creatures. We may think of three such high points.

The first is the completion of the creation. God Himself rested on the seventh day from His work of creating. It did not mean that God was tired. It meant that the creation had been completed and it was very good. Nothing further needed to be done to it except for God to look after it. God enjoyed all that He had made. So He blessed the seventh day and made it holy.

The second high point is Israel’s exodus from Egypt. God had rescued them from their cruel masters and they were now free to have a day for rest and worship. That was a blessing the Israelites had never experienced.

The third high point is Christ’s resurrection. His victory over death was of such great importance to the early Christian church that it was the single biggest factor that caused the early Christians to hold their worship services on the first day of the week, the day Christ rose.

These three high points, the completion of the creation and God resting, the exodus from slavery, and Christ’s resurrection, are all great blessings for God’s people, and all three are important reasons for observing the Lord’s Day. They give the day a special character of celebration, peace and joy. They are also the things we risk losing with the modern disappearance of the Lord’s Day. Yet they are the very things we need in our busy and hectic lives. Hence we speak of re-discovering the Lord’s Day.

There is one more step towards reclaiming the blessings of the Lord’s Day, and that is the positive value it can have for the whole of society. One of the cruelest and most oppressive aspects of our modern economy is that it is asking too much of many people and not enough of others. Some cannot get their work done in six days and so they are pressured into working on Sundays to get it finished. Others are compelled to keep their businesses open for seven days a week in order to prevent losing customers to the big companies that are always open for business. The staff is asked to work extra shifts, or are given time off on days when business is slack. This is cheaper than hiring extra workers. Thus we have an economy where many work harder and longer whilst others are left unemployed with nothing to do.

A God-honouring observance of the Lord’s Day by the whole of society would get rid of this injustice. Let all of society enjoy a day of rest and recuperation by halting commerce. We’re talking about the kind of work that can stop, like the shops, fast food outlets, cinemas, real estate and nurseries. There is work that has to keep going, like milking cows, hospitals and power stations. The same amount of a working week in business or commerce, and more if required, can be done by employing the unemployed.

Let people listen to God their Maker by working only six days with a day of rest in between and trust God for providing the needs of all in society. Sunday observance will provide people in society with equal opportunity to socialise, visit friends and relatives, do their religious activities, and Christians are left free to worship God.

In the first place, then, these are just some steps that need to be taken in order to re-discover the blessings God has in store for all people with the keeping of the Lord’s Day.

2. How God organised our time-cycle

We can see with the Sabbath in Old Testament times and the Lord’s Day in New Testament times how God, having our well-being in mind, organised our time. We, and the society we live in, have been used to this pattern of time flowing in seven-day cycles for so long that we seldom stop to think how it came to be like that in the first place. It’s quite remarkable really that the physical descendants of Abraham, Jews and Arabs, have had this cycle of time for thousand of years. And the spiritual descendants of Abraham, the Christians, also have had it for nearly two thousand years. Jews, Muslims, and Christians make up a sizeable portion of the world’s population and religions.

Other societies from antiquity, who do not know God, still see the need for a cycle of work and rest and some of these cultures and religions follow the phases of the moon or rotate their lives on numbers other than seven. Whenever revolutionaries violently overthrow their society, they frequently do away with this time-cycle and pay the price. Their new society does not become better but worse.

Opponents to Christianity have also tried to do away with the seven-day cycle in their attempt to rob Christians of their opportunity to keep in touch with God on the Lord’s Day. The French Revolution was led by anti-Christian leaders and they abolished the seven-day cycle of six days work and one day rest. The same happened with communist-led revolutions. People under these regimes were forced to cut their ties with God and became slaves of the new order. As a result, over a period of time, they and their society lost God-given values: like the dignity of man as a creature of God, a positive attitude to work, true justice, the worth of marriage, the need for the proper discipline of children, and many other biblical ideals.

The same is happening again today because the economy has become the new master and the people its slaves. Never before has the economy so dominated our lives as now. The upturns and downturns of the economy, the value of the dollar against other currencies, the performances of the stock markets in Tokyo, New York and London, and our own, are daily television news. Who among the economists still look to God as the One who makes the crops grow and provides food for the hungry? And with God being pushed out and the economy dictating how we should live, the time-cycle of a seven-day week is fast disappearing.

Yet, the pattern of six days of work, followed by a day of rest, is found throughout the Bible. As we observed already, it began with the creation. God chose to complete all that He wanted to create in six days. Genesis 2:2 says it like this, “By the seventh day God had finished the work he had been doing; so on the seventh day he rested from all his work.” God did not, after a day’s rest, return to the work of creating on the eight day. He did not have to. The creation was complete. But it’s that cycle of time that God put into the creation that demands our attention.

We read of it again when Israelites were delivered from their slavery to the Egyptians and were free in the desert. Their lives were now no longer under the time-cycle of their cruel masters, which was unlimited bondage, but free under God’s time-cycle. The Egyptians cared little for their well-being. They, in fact, were tyring to reduce their numbers and make them a nothing-nation. God had the very opposite in mind for Israel. He wanted to make His people into a great nation who could enjoy their lives under God in freedom and peace, and remain close to God through their worship of Him.

Thus, even before the Ten Commandments were given to Moses at Mt Sinai, God ordered that the manna, which He miraculously sent from heaven to provide for them, be gathered only in as much as they needed for that day’s food. Some did not quite trust God in this arrangement and thought they’d gather a bit more and so keep some for the next day – just in case no manna fell the next day. But in the morning of the next day they found that the manna of the day before had maggots in it. Yet on the sixth day God said that they should gather enough manna for two days and on the seventh day, their Sabbath, the extra manna they still had left did not have maggots in them. Again some did not fully trust God in what He had said and went out looking for manna on the Sabbath but found none (Ex 16:1 ff).

It is obvious that God was teaching Israel that in the desert He would command nature to provide their food on a six-day one-day cycle so that they could keep the Sabbath. God gave them a break from the chore of having to daily go out and gather food. The manna stopped when Israel entered Canaan and could live off the land. But there, too, they did not have to work their fields and plant crops and reap harvest every day of the week. God blessed the land so that there was plenty for them on the Sabbath as well, allowing them to enjoy their rest.

When the Ten Commandments were given, then it was not so much a new situation for Israel. God’s will not to steal or murder and so on, and also the keeping of the Sabbath, was obviously known already. At Mt Sinai, God’s covenant with Israel was formally drawn up and the commandments were an important part of that bond between God and His people.

But what is different about the fourth commandment is that God explained the reason for the Sabbath as the establishment of the seven-day week cycle at creation. Then, when the Ten Commandments were given again to Israel just before their entry into Canaan, then the reason for Sabbath-keeping is that Israel had been released from their slavery in Egypt.

So in Exodus 20 the reason for the Sabbath day is that man may follow God’s own example of rest at creation after six days work. God, who judged that it was good for the earth and good for man, put this cycle into the creation. Being created in the image of God also meant for man to follow God’s pattern of work and rest. When the Ten Commandments are repeated in Deuteronomy 5, then the new reason for keeping the Sabbath was not to replace the original reason. The seven-day cycle that God put in the creation remains.

But when Israel could live in the promised land as a free people, then they are also to remember that God delivered them out of that terrible slavery in Egypt where they were not free to enjoy a Sabbath’s day rest. Slaves cannot take a day off; free people can. And the blessing of a day free from work with its toil and worry is so beneficial that the servants and visitors could enjoy it as well, and even their animals that helped them in their labours, like the donkey and the ox. All could enjoy the day of rest – animals were physically refreshed, and man spiritually refreshed as well.

The picture that thus emerges from the Old Testament concerning the fourth commandment is that the Sabbath was a wonderful blessing. It reminded Israel that God was their Creator and that He would provide for them out of the storehouses of His creation. The Sabbath was given so that they could remain the holy people of the holy God. He stood in covenant relationship with them and the Sabbath was the sign of this relationship. By observing this day of rest they had time to reflect on God and what He meant for them. It was a wonderful opportunity to worship God and remain holy before Him (cf Ex 31:12 ff).

God knew better than anyone else that Israel would remain close to God by keeping the Sabbath. The Sabbath especially allowed His covenant people to live as image-bearers of God and be regularly reminded through the worship of God who He was for them and they for Him. He was their loving Provider and Redeemer and they His people who responded to Him with their love and obedience. And so jealous was God of this relationship that He put in place stiff penalties for those who broke the fourth commandment.

Things have changed with the New Testament church replacing Old Testament Israel as God’s people. Of one these changes is that the fourth commandment is not nearly as much in the foreground as it was in Old Testament times. In fact, the Sabbath seems to have dropped away. The apostle Paul referred to the Sabbath only three times in all his letters and he speaks of it as a Jewish ceremonial feast day in much the same way as he spoke about holy places and holy foods (Rom 14:5; Gal 4:10; Col 2:16). It would seem that the New Testament teaches that Sabbath keeping the way it was done in Old Testament times is no longer required by God.

Does this mean that the fourth commandment has dropped out of the ten? We can hardly make that conclusion seeing that God put the cycle of six days work and one day rest into the creation from the beginning. When Israel received the fourth commandment at Mt Sinai then the seven-day cycle was already in existence. So if this God-given pattern for the life of His creatures and the creation was there from the beginning, and well before Israel came on the scene, then there is good reason to believe that God still intends it to be there after Israel was replaced by the church. The letter to Hebrews says that there is still a Sabbath-rest for the people of God (4:9). We need to know what it meant by that.

The church in the New Testament began to worship on the first day of the week, the day Jesus rose from the dead. It became known already in the days of the New Testament church as the Lord’s Day. There is no direct command from God for this but it certainly is in keeping with His cycle of six days work and one day rest.

Important also is that the blessings of this seven-day cycle may continue. It was very beneficial for God’s people before Christ came and it may be equally beneficial for us who live after His resurrection. Moreover, the opportunity for Israel to remain holy before God by worshipping Him on one day in seven is also still there for us when we observe the Lord’s Day.

We still have to look at how Jesus saw the Sabbath. We also still have to look at how to overcome the obstacles that stand in the way of our re-discovering the Lord’s Day. And finally we need to know how to observe this wonderful day God has given us in the best possible way. The Lord willing, we’ll look at all that next time.

Amen.