What Can I Do on the Sabbath?

Ten Commandments

In this post, I’m going to assume you are on board with the idea that Sabbath observance continues to be binding in the New Testament church. If not, you can review my posts here, here and here. The question for today is how to set apart the Sabbath as holy as New Testament believers. Whenever you start talking about setting apart the Sabbath, the main question many people want to solve is whether or not their particular activity of choice would be permissible on the Lord’s Day. “Is it okay for me to do activity X on the Sabbath?” Other people have made artificial lines in the sand in an effort to maintain the sanctity of this day. I think we can do better. I think Scripture gives us a very clear picture of what the Sabbath, or Lord’s Day, should look like. The directives of the Bible on this commandment can be broken down into three main areas.

First, the fourth commandment clearly states that our daily labors are to cease. The Lord commands that on his Sabbath we “shall not do any work.” It is directed at individuals. Of course, works of necessity and mercy are not included in this command to rest, but by and large, we are to cease from our labors.

Second, the fourth commandment also states that the daily labors of those under our care should cease. From children to servants to cattle to foreigners, none are to do any work. The best picture of the implementation of this commandment comes from Neh. 13:15-22. There Nehemiah forcefully implements Sabbath rest, not only for the people of Israel, but also for the Tyrian merchants who tried to set up shop outside the gates. He understood: the Sabbath was a day of rest.

Third, as is so often the case in Scripture, mere external action is not a sufficient expression of our love for God. It must be accompanied by the appropriate motivation. Is. 58:13-14 tell us that on the Sabbath day our hearts are to be turned aside from our own pleasures and instead directed toward delighting in the Lord.

With these broad-stroke principles laid out in Scripture, we can determine the appropriateness of many, if not most, activities on the Sabbath. We simply translate the principles into questions and subject any activity to them: 1. Am I working? 2. Am I making anyone else work? 3. Am I turning from my own pleasure and delighting in the Lord? So long as we answer honestly I think these questions will take care of 95% of the activities in question. I will give only one example:

Can I eat in a restaurant on the Sabbath after morning church? Well, assuming there is no emergency crisis at your house you can ask the three questions. Are you working? No. Are you making others work? Yes. Are you delighting in the Lord? Maybe. For the Christian asking the three questions helps us see there is something in behavior that goes against God’s instruction. We are causing others to work and the 4th commandment says we should not. If our actions violate God’s commandment the Christian is not free to act in that way.

Do not forget. The Christian obeys God’s laws evangelically. What I mean is, we do not obey because we are hoping for God’s approval. Instead, we know and believe what God has done to make us acceptable, so we delight in being able to obey him. In Rom. 7:24 Paul, in agony of spirit cries out about how wretched a man he is. He does not cry this way because he has to obey God’s commandments. He cries out this way because he continually disobeys the commandments. So ask the three questions about your choices of activity on the Sabbath and be prepared to delight yourself in obeying the Lord.

The Purpose of the Sabbath

Bible Open

In our consideration of the Sabbath seen that the fourth commandment is part of the moral law given by God. These laws reflect the very character of God and turning against them is to turn against God. This moral law is summarized in the Ten Commandments (Cf. Deut. 4:13). Since the Sabbath is part of the Decalogue, this commandment is also binding for today. For the sake of time, I am assuming the arguments for the transfer of the Old Testament Sabbath from the seventh day to the Christian Sabbath, or Lord’s Day, on the first day of the week. I do that so we can take time to understand the purpose for God giving the fourth commandment instead.

There are three main reasons why God gives us the Sabbath:

First, Exodus 20:8-11 teaches us that God gives us the Sabbath so we might imitate his rest after he had finished his creative work. Each week again, we remember God’s rest and imitate him. Our rest draws us back to the six days of creation when God made all things. He is the creator of all things and therefore is Lord of all things. Nothing in this world falls outside the realm of God’s sovereign power. Considering this truth helps us to remember our obligation to him.

Second, Deuteronomy 5:12-15 teaches us to remember something else: the Exodus. There Moses says Israel is to obey the Sabbath because God led them out of Egypt. In the New Testament economy we have a similar exodus experience. It does not involve sand, tents and Jericho, yet the exodus is just as significant. By God’s grace, we are led out of our bondage to sin to the blessed hope of eternal redemption. We are led out of the kingdom of darkness into the kingdom of light (Cf. Col. 1:13). On the Sabbath we are called to remember our redemption.

Third, because of our propensity to be satisfied with hollow, outward obedience, God also directs our motives for the day. In Isaiah 58:13-14, we are told we ought not delight in our own pleasure but instead delight in the Lord. The function of Sabbath is, in fact, to help us turn from our normal orientation toward the Lord. We know from Romans 12:1-2 that all of life is worship to God, but in a special way, God sets aside the Sabbath for the purpose of worship: a special day for delighting in the Lord.

The Sabbath, then, functions as that weekly reminder of our eternal obligation to the Lord because we are his creatures, his gracious redemption of our souls from Satan’s kingdom and the worship we should give him on this special holy day. So what happens when we neglect the Sabbath? We eliminate the God-given reminder of who we are to live for. Instead of that weekly, central reminder that God is the author of all time, God becomes one of the choices we may make when it comes to using our time. We will work when we want, play when we want, travel when we want, sing when we want, and worship when we want, if at all. Skeptical? Just look around and ask yourself whether the church has flourished or faltered since she turned her back on the Sabbath.

The Sabbath in ALL of History

Sun Breaking Through Clouds

Last post we looked at the Sabbath as one of the three creation ordinances God established to give structure to our relationships with him, his world, and our fellow man. These ordinances are simply ways in which man is to imitate God. Work, marriage and rest are all done by God and as his image-bearers, we should do them as well.

These ordinances were established prior to the fall into sin, and form a perpetual order for mankind. They make up part of the core of man’s obligations to God. There are other obligations God places on his creation as well as part of his relationship with the world. These relationships between God and man in their different forms are called God’s covenants in Scripture. Prior to sin, God’s covenant with man was defined along the lines of his obedience. Man was to live before the Lord in perfect obedience, and in response God would graciously give life (Cf. Gen. 2:17). The initial relationship between God and man is typically called the Covenant of Works, or Life. However, after the fall in Gen. 3:8 man dies both physically and spiritually. His thoughts, motivations and desires are all corrupted by sin.

Man can no longer meet the righteous requirements of the obligations that go along with God’s covenant. However, God in his grace inaugurates another covenant: the Covenant of Grace. In this covenant, though man is unable to fulfill and obey, God sends the seed of the woman to be the mediator between God and man. This mediator is the Christ who lives in perfect obedience to God on our behalf. He came not to abolish the law and the prophets, but to fulfill them (Mt. 5:17). His perfect righteousness is imputed to us that we would have life. If Christ had disobeyed he would not have been able to mediate between God and man. So Christ’s obedience does matter. God’s obligations for man never change, because they reflect his unchangeable character. These obligations make up God’s moral law.

God’s moral law is distinct from his other laws. When God summarizes the obligations of the covenant he gives to Israel, he summarizes them in the Ten Commandments (Cf. Deut. 4:13). We have already seen that God’s obligations do not change between covenants administrations. That means in all ages, the Ten Commandments are binding. We can easily see this distinction if we try and apply the Decalogue to pre-fall Eden.

If Adam, in Eden, would have decided to make an idol, he would have sinned. If Adam, in Eden, would have murdered or would have stolen, he would have sinned. However, if Adam failed to set up cities of refuge in Eden, he would not have sinned. The moral law, summarized in the Ten Commandments, was binding for him. The other laws are specific applications of this moral law to the people of Israel, or to the world as a whole now stained with sin.

Now here comes the point of this whole exercise. Since the Sabbath Day is part of the Ten Commandments it is part of God’s perpetual obligations for man and therefore is applicable for us as well. Exactly how that plays itself out in today’s world I leave for the next article.

What Is the Sabbath?

Ten Commandments

“And he said to them, ‘The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath.’ (Mark 2:27)

Thus the debate begins. Is Sabbath an abiding principle, or is it something just for the nation of Israel? Are there Ten Commandments or nine? Does the New Testament church still need to honor the Sabbath? These are questions over which many sincere believers disagree. But what does the Bible teach us? Before we answer that question let us make time to understand our cultural context.

Until fairly recently North American culture respected the idea of Sabbath. This idea was implemented by the settlers of the New World and can be traced back as early as 1620. More than 300 years later, in 1961 the Supreme Court ruled in favor of laws prohibiting commerce on Sunday. In Canada, the Lord’s Day Act was finally struck down in 1985 to allow stores to be open on Sunday. Those prohibitions have long been cast aside and the idea of a national day of rest is laughable to most. Others, on the other extreme, turn Sunday into a day of list keeping. Therefore we have two extremes. One says the Sabbath is to be ignored, the other turns it into a checklist of things to and not to do.

To understand Sabbath we have to start at the beginning. To what point in history can our foundations for the Sabbath be traced? We can turn right to the beginning of time: creation. As God creates the world he institutes foundational ordinances to shape man’s relationship with the world he is to steward as well as with the God who gave him this responsibility. We will look briefly at the first two before settling in on a more detailed study on the Sabbath:

  1. Work. In Gen. 2:15, God places Adam in Eden to work there. Work is not a result of the fall, but precedes the fall and will continue into heaven. Work is what God does (see John 5:17). Man, as his image bearer, should reflect him.
  2. Marriage. In Gen. 2:24, bringing Adam and Eve together is the foundation for the institution of marriage. It is because God brought the first people together that marriage continues today. In Hosea, God himself is described as the faithful husband to an unfaithful bride, Israel. Marriage is designed by God and practiced faithfully by him. Man, as his image bearer should reflect him.
  3. Sabbath Rest. In Gen. 2:1-3 God sets apart one day in seven for rest. This rest is made up of the enjoyment of God’s blessing and the recognition of the special purpose assigned to the seventh day when God makes it holy (v. 3). Blessing in the Bible is the opposite of cursing. When God curses Adam after the fall he banishes him from his presence (Gen. 3:24). This curse is replaced in heaven with blessing when God promises to dwell among his people (Rev. 21:3). In addition, God makes the Sabbath holy. When God makes something holy he sets it apart for a special use. The seventh day is set apart to enjoy the blessing, or presence, of God. God rests on the seventh day, not from all his work, but from the work of creation. God rests on the seventh day. Man, as his image bearer should reflect him.

Sabbath. It is established at creation as one of the three foundational creation ordinances. Whatever we conclude in the weeks ahead, we cannot say Sabbath is cancelled with Moses’ other ceremonial laws, because it predates the law given at Sinai. Our task in the weeks ahead will be to discern the significance of this creation ordinance in the life of Israel, but then also in the life of the church.