The Concept Of Rest

Human life has always been busy. It’s always been very much about juggling priorities, trying to keep one’s head above water, and trying to provide for oneself and others. Merely providing the necessities is hard enough, but getting ahead is even harder. No era is exempt from being busy, but our current era is especially a busy era since we are dealing with amazing amounts of information, distractions, and pressures.  Being busy is not a bad thing, but being badly busy is not good, and hence we need rest.  If we get too much rest, it is not good. But if we get no rest, it is equally not good.

When God created, He also rested, and thus He instituted the Sabbath. Humans was not made for the Sabbath, but the Sabbath was made to be a blessing to humans. This Sabbath was right at the core of how we count time, it became a reminder of the cycle of weeks.  It was a regular rest for our good and for God’s glory. It wasn’t ever intended to be a burden or a restrictions, it was intended to be a delight.  Do you have a delightful rest to look forward to every week?

The 4th Commandment, the Sabbath commandment is probably one of the most controversial of the ten commandments. Some Christians now believe the Sabbath has been canceled out in the New Covenant. Others still hold to the old Saturday Sabbath. Still others hold to a Christian Sabbath, which occurs on Sunday. I fall into the later group, I consider myself a non-grumpy Sunday Sabbatarian. There are strong Biblical reasons for this view, though of course the Christian Church is not at all unanimous on how to handle the Sabbath. To get to the heart of Biblical teaching on this subject, one has to address when exactly the Sabbath was instituted, what type of law it was, what is the role of the moral law in the New Covenant, how Christ handled the Sabbath, and whether or not there was a day change. Also, one would need to deal with a few passages in the New Testament which might suggest to some that the Sabbath was cancelled out in the New Covenant. These are matters which I may address at some other time, but are beyond the scope of this post.

In my view, the Sabbath never has been, and still isn’t a day in which we should be grumpy and look down our noses at other people. You can not keep the Sabbath well if you are grumpy while keeping it. Instead, the Sabbath or The Lord’s Day is a day of worship, joy, and delight.  If breaking the Sabbath is a sin, then so is not delighting in it! It’s a day that is to be different than the other six. God didn’t give this day so He could enslave us with restrictions, but instead He gave it so we could be spared from being enslaved to our work. We spend it worshiping, rejoicing, feasting, and resting, not sitting on our porch and staring and grumbling at our neighbors.  It is moreso a Wedding Party than a Funeral Dirge.

In observing the rest that God gave us in the Sabbath via the Christian or New Covenant Sabbath, I strive to:

A. Delight in and worship God (individually and collectively).

B. As implied in section A, make myself available for the worship services of the church.

C. Cease from things I normally do for the rest of the week. And forget my work and the hurried pace of life.

D. Enjoy food, fellowship with God’s people, and find some time to be contemplative and relax

I do not do these perfectly, but I’m increasingly aware of how this sort of a good rest impacts the very rhythm of life.  I don’t know how I would make it through the years without this sort of rest every week.

As a good political libertarian, I do not believe in using state laws to enforce the Lord’s Day or Sabbath on others in our day and age (now that those laws have been struck down, its not likely that this issue will come up again). Neither do I believe in judging others in how they keep or do not keep this law. That said, from what I understand from the Scriptures, I see a moral obligation for believers to honor the Lord’s Day based on the 4th commandment. Even those who believe the Sabbath has been canceled in the New Covenant tend to draw some lessons from the 4th Commandment, and apply it to the Lord’s Day.

The Christian Sabbath is not just an abstract item on a checklist. It’s made for your benefit by the One who knows all things and knows you better than you know yourself. He gave it to you not to enslave you, but rather to liberate you.

“…call the Sabbath a delight..” – Isaiah 58:13

“…The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath. So the Son of Man is lord even of the Sabbath…” – Jesus in Mark 2