Word of Salvation – Vol.48 No.8 – February 2003

 

Re-discovering the Lord’s Day (2)

Sermon by Rev M P Geluk

on Lord’s Day 38 (Exodus 20:8-11)

 

Scripture Reading:  Luke 13:10-17

Suggested Hymns:  BoW 111:1, 2, 6, 7; 315; 92; 240

 

Congregation of our Lord Jesus Christ.

In our first sermon on the fourth commandment, in the opening remarks, we described our lives as being very hectic. There is not enough time to do everything. Business and commerce, when open seven days a week, are often making excessive demands on their staff and, consequently, these people can’t attend to the needs of their own homes and families. As a result the Sunday is increasingly taken up with doing all kind of things for which there was no time during the week. And so every day in our society has virtually become a working day. Our modern society is pushing out the Lord’s Day.

As Christians we face a real danger of losing this day altogether. It hurts us physically because we can’t seem to slow down any more. It hurts us socially because there is no time left for families to relax and enjoy each other’s company, or to interact with friends. And it also hurts us spiritually because we’re missing out on the worship of God.

We then mentioned some steps that we could take in an effort to re-discover the Lord’s Day. We need to realise that the fourth commandment is a wonderful blessing from God. If we associate the Lord’s Day with negative rules and restrictions, then either we are working with a wrong interpretation of the commandment, or we just don’t want to obey God because we love sin more.

Then we looked at Scripture and found that the fourth commandment with its prescription for six days work and a day of rest goes back to the pattern that God followed in the creation-week. In His wisdom God thought is was best for people and their working animals, to have a cycle of six days’ work and a day of rest. This cycle provides physical refreshment, and for man there was the added blessing of spiritual refreshment. For on the seventh day people have time to worship God and so strengthen their ties with God whose image they have.

It thus came as no surprise that the manna Israel received from God in the desert to sustain them, fell on six successive days but not on the seventh. Yet enough fell on the sixth day to provide for the seventh day. God was teaching Israel that by observing the seven-day cycle, they could trust God to provide their needs.

God even commanded that the land be given rest every seventh year. Land that is always worked will give poorer crop returns. Let the land have a year free from having to grow things and then its productivity will be restored again. There were a number of other laws God gave to Israel that had to do with cycles of seven. The whole idea was work and rest.

When the commandments were given to Israel at Mt Sinai, then the reason for keeping the fourth commandment was God’s pattern in the creation week. An additional reason was given in Deuteronomy 5 when the law was repeated and Israel was about to enter the promised land. As a free people, settled in their own land, they were to keep the Sabbath because back in Egypt when they were slaves they had no such freedom. Freedom to worship God on the Lord’s Day is a wonderful blessing because of the physical and spiritual blessings it provides. But with our modern economy crowding out the Lord’s Day we are in danger of losing this blessing. For that reason we are talking about the re-discovery of the Lord’s Day.

1. Jesus and the Sabbath

The four gospels, Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, report extensively on Jesus’ teaching and work and they are in the New Testament. Jesus, however, still lived under Old Testament conditions but He also pointed to new changes. He Himself was the change. On the one hand He went to the temple, taught in the synagogues and observed the laws of Moses. As such He kept the Jewish Sabbath. But on the other hand Jesus was the fulfilment of the Old Testament.

When the Spirit came at Pentecost, the gospel was also preached to the Gentiles and many non-Jews were converted to faith in Christ. Believers came to be known as Christians and the Jewish rituals of sacrifices and special foods no longer needed to be observed. They were only intended as shadows of things to come. Christ, the real thing, had replaced the shadows.

The Jewish Sabbath also gradually disappeared and in its place came the Lord’s Day. With this change the seven-day cycle was maintained. There is no command in the New Testament that says the Sabbath must shift from the seventh day to the first day of the week. The New Testament simply reports that the early Christian church came together for worship on the day that Jesus rose from the dead. It was also on the first day of the week that the Holy Spirit was poured out on the church (Acts 20:7; 1 Cor 16:2; Rev 1:10). Most Christians have been following the example of the early church of having public worship on the Lord’s Day ever since.

But even though we don’t follow Jesus’ example by having the Sabbath, His teaching on the fourth commandment remains important. Like with the other commandments, Jesus also showed God’s real purpose with the fourth commandment. And mostly this came out in His clashes with the Pharisees. The Pharisees’ observation of the Sabbath bordered on the fanatical. No doubt, their idea of Sabbath keeping was in itself a reaction to spiritual apathy that was present in Israel before Jesus’ birth. In an effort to turn Israel away from their spiritual deadness and back to God, they introduced many extra laws to get the people to serve God. But their extra laws had the opposite effect. Keeping the Sabbath according to the Pharisees made its observance drudgery.

The Pharisees were angry, for example, that Jesus’ disciples picked some heads of grain that was growing around them, when Jesus and His disciples were walking from one village to the next on the Sabbath (Lk 6:1). It was harvesting, they said. It was work. But they were not harvesting. They simply wanted to eat something.

The Pharisees were angry again when Jesus healed a man on the Sabbath (Lk 6:10). Instead of being happy that a human being was made whole, they were irritated by the breaking of their Sabbath rules. Jesus challenged the Pharisees and said that if they were prepared on the Sabbath to lift a sheep out of a pit into which it had fallen (Mt 12:11), and untie an ox or donkey from the stall and lead it out to give it water (Lk 13:15), then surely an act of healing on the Sabbath is permitted.

It is lawful to do good on the Sabbath, said Jesus (Mt 12:12). It is lawful to save life (Lk 12:9), the Lord said. The right approach to the Sabbath is found in Jesus’ statements when He said, “The Son of Man is Lord of the Sabbath” (Lk 6:5); and, “The Sabbath was made for man, and not man for the Sabbath” (Mk 2:27).

What this means is that we must listen to God and not to man as to how we are to enjoy the Lord’s Day. We live under the Lordship of Christ. And He has specifically said that the Sabbath was given for man’s well-being. It was made for man’s enjoyment and celebration. With the fourth commandment God provided for man’s physical and spiritual refreshment.

We must praise and thank the Lord Jesus for teaching us that the weekly day of rest is not a day for sitting in a corner and doing absolutely nothing. The Lord Himself taught in the synagogue on the Sabbath. He healed a man’s shrivelled hand on the Sabbath. He restored to health on the Sabbath a woman who was bent over and could not straighten up for eighteen years (Lk 13:10-16). And on the Sabbath, Jesus enabled a man to walk who had been a paralytic for thirty-eight years (Jn 5:1-10).

The Sabbath was the ideal day for the Lord to do all those things. God gave man a day in the week to bring about his true well-being. So what better day is there but the Lord’s Day to be restored physically and mentally from the toil and worries of the work-week, to worship God and hear of His love through the salvation blessings of Christ! Sometimes we joke about the minister telling the congregation to rest from work on the Lord’s Day whilst he himself is busy with the work of preaching. But it shows we have not understood. When God rested on the seventh day, He looked after what He had made. That was a different kind of work, but it was still work. Jesus taught on the Sabbath. The Lord’s Day is a wonderful day to proclaim the blessings of God and salvation to all those who have come to worship God and want to know how the Lord can make their lives meaningful.

Hebrews 4 speaks about a Sabbath-rest for the people of God. There it means more than just one day in the week. Look at it this way. Christ is making all things new. It will happen on the new earth. There in the presence of God, all His people will be free from worry, toil, tears, pain and sin and death. Our bodies will be perfect and work will be a pleasure. We will worship God continually and without any hassles. This whole new situation is so good that Hebrews 4 urges us to “make every effort to enter that rest” (vs 10). It is full salvation, of course, and it’s like having a continual Sabbath. It is, in fact, the eternal Sabbath.

Now our weekly Lord’s Day, if we enjoy it the way the Lord meant us to, is a foretaste of that eternal Sabbath. The Lord’s Day, when we go the right way about it, will begin making a difference to all the other days of the week. Because you have been physically and mentally refreshed and spiritually renewed on the Lord’s Day, it will make a difference to the way you work and toil during the week. Because of the blessings you have received from God by observing the Lord’s Day, it will enable you, as the catechism says, to rest from evil every day of the week. In other words, what you learn from the worship of God on the Lord’s Day teaches you to be holy all the other days of the week. As you allow the Lord to work in you through His Holy Spirit, you may already begin in this life the eternal Sabbath.

We have seen, then, that Jesus’ teaching and example with regard to the Sabbath, gives us the right idea of how to understand the Lord’s Day. And Hebrews 4 shows us that the right observance of the Lord’s Day has a positive effect on the rest of the week. Through all of that we have a foretaste of the perfect life in heaven with God on the new earth to come. All this, then, is fundamental to us in re-discovering the Lord’s Day in a modern society that threatens to get rid of it.

2. Overcoming the obstacles

One of the obstacles we face is that the society we are part of no longer trusts in God and it is dragging us along that path unless we consciously resist it. That’s different to saying that society no longer believes in God. There are many people who still believe there is a God and they include some of our leading politicians. Not all are very passionate about it. Maybe they say they believe in God in order to win the votes of all those in the electorate who like their political leaders to believe in God. But as regards a trusting in God, neither our political leaders, nor our society as a whole, show much evidence of doing that. It’s looking almost exclusively to economic forecasts and what the rise or fall of interest rates might do to economic growth.

So, what has a Christian’s trust in God to do with re-discovering the Lord’s Day? Well, the whole working week long we are busy in trying to make a dollar in order to meet the cost of living. We try to save enough money to buy a house and pay off the mortgage. In all that most of us are locked in to the performance of the nation’s economy. And so we are busy all week wrestling with our material world. Or, if we are farmers, with the natural world as well. Will there be enough rain to have a crop growing to feed the animals and make a dollar? At our jobs we hammer, straighten out car panels, paint, carry, work on the computer, plough and plant. At home we wash, do the ironing, clean, cook and cart the kids around.

On the Lord’s Day, however, let go of it all! Let it be. Celebrate the day of Jesus’ resurrection and take a break from the toil and concerns of work. It will refresh you physically, mentally and give you a day of peace. Enjoy the worship of God and be revived spiritually. When God out of love for your well-being put a day of rest into your lives and into the creation, then you can trust Him that He will not let the material and natural world come crashing down around you when you take a day off for a well deserved break. Let’s trust Him to provide for our needs, as He promised He would do. And even if things look grim and your business might not succeed, then at least have a day free from worrying about it. Go and worship God and let Him remind you that He is still there. A lack of trust in God providing for us, then, is one obstacle we should try to overcome as we re-discover the Lord’s Day.

A second obstacle is that society and government are no longer protecting the Lord’s Day, which means that Christians in trying to re-discover the Lord’s Day are standing alone. In the past there were laws that prevented commerce from doing business on Sunday. These laws have or are fast disappearing. It’s become a vicious circle. People who spend more hours at weekday jobs need the days they are not working for shopping, which often includes the Sunday. This prompts business to hire more Sunday workers. Thus for many people within the current system, it has become virtually impossible to regularly rest and worship on the Lord’s Day.

As Christians we dearly long for a system where all people have work and enough income to live, and time for rest and worship as well. But the Christian’s call to give all kinds of work that are not strictly necessary a break on the Lord’s Day is not being heard. In our society Christians are a minority voice. Therefore, unless there is a large-scale revival, Christians cannot expect a return to the days where the Lord’s Day had legal protection.

Christians, therefore, will have to try for jobs where they are left free on the Lord’s Day. Or we have to persuade the employer to respect our spiritual needs and give us regular time off so that we can worship God. That will not always be easy in today’s society and, therefore, Christians who often have to stand alone with God in a non-Christian world, may be required to make sacrifices. Other believers have had to do that in times past. But at the same time it would help if all Christians everywhere were to persuade the powers that be to seek the well-being of all people by providing them with a day of rest on the Lord’s Day. To honour God in this way can only result in society as a whole being blessed by God.

3. Making the most of the Lord’s Day

Every local congregation will have to decide on times of worship that enables most of the worshippers of God to attend the services. When Christians were slaves, the church met for worship either early in the morning before the slaves’ masters were awake, or late at night after the masters had gone to bed. The church cannot ignore the spiritual needs of members who sincerely long to join the congregation in worship but are prevented because their work is of such a nature that it has to be done on Sundays.

It will also help our re-discovery of the Lord’s Day if we realise that the keeping of the Lord’s Day is not, in the first place, about having a day off. It’s about learning from God and renewing our relationship with Him. Keeping the Lord’s Day is about being thankful for God creating the world. It’s about the Lord giving us freedom from slavery to sin. And it’s about overcoming the power of sin and death in the cross and resurrection of Christ.

So Sunday is not just for going to church and waiting to be entertained and wondering what you might do once the service is finished. Sunday worship is about taking part in the praise of God. It’s paying attention to the words you are singing. The worship of God is not about just slouching on your chair waiting for things to happen and pass you by. The worship of God is about having a Bible in your hands and being determined to know the meaning of the passage that is preached on. It’s about praying and asking God to speak to you and work in you with His Spirit. It’s about leaving the church being much closer to God than what you were on entering church. It’s about going back into the world to be a light for Christ to those who are going to hell unless they repent and believe.

But what, besides going to church, is the Lord’s Day good for? It is also day on which we must deliberately stop worrying about our work. I remember a Christian man whose work car was also used for the transport of his family to church on Sundays. On Saturdays he would unload all his tools and stuff and not load it back again on Sunday evening but he got up an hour earlier on Mondays to do that. Doing it this way gave him Sunday evening to enjoy time with the family or friends and not have to be absent in order to prepare for work.

Besides going to church, the Lord’s Day is also a good day to have time to love your children and spouse. That’s not to be neglected during the week, of course, but Sundays gives that extra time to do things together, like going for a walk, ride your bikes along the river or through the park, play some games, do some activity that relaxes you and is enjoyable. You take food from home and have a picnic somewhere and not buy it from the shop on the Sunday. And you’re back home in time to make it to the evening service.

The Lord’s Day is not a good day to be paying the bills, preparing tax returns, doing that school assignment, preparing for that exam, or making a list of all the things you need to do in the coming week. When you do all those things, then you’re filling your mind again with all the concerns and worries of everyday living on the very day that the Lord said to have a break from it all.

We must also resist the pressure of having church committee meetings on Sundays. Many church-related meetings are about problem solving, difficulties to straighten out, and a host of concerns about this, that and the other. The Lord’s Day is a wonderful day to be free from those church burdens.

Re-discovering the Lord’s Day is all about taking hold of the blessings that God gave with the fourth commandment where He told us to use the six days of the week to do our work followed by a day on which we may rest. The solution to the many problems of modern society, like too much work or not enough work, stress and fatigue, worry and unending toil, tension and frustration, is not found in better management or improved technological skills, but following God’s ordering of society in weekly cycles of work and rest.

We need to remember that with all our hard work we don’t have to take over the things that God is doing. He makes the crops grow and brings the rain and the sunshine. And our greatest fulfilment does not come from acquiring an abundance of material things. It comes from living from whatever God’s hand gives or withholds. Even our planet needs a rest from human plucking and burning, from buying and selling.

Keeping the Lord’s Day to God’s honour will be for the good of ourselves, for the church and also for society.

Amen.