I had the unique opportunity to talk deeply about biblical matters with a
wealthy orthodox Jew. Among other things we talked about the Sabbath. He
was a very conscientious Jew who knew his Bible quite well, and so I asked
him how he reconciled operating a business on Saturday when the Old
Testament forbids work on the Sabbath. He responded by saying that he does
not come to his business on that day, but has Gentiles operate it. But I told
him I thought the law required for you to give rest to all your servants as well.
He said that it was so but that they have their Sabbath on Sunday, and so it all
works out just fine. Christianity and Judaism seem to make a good team in
the business world.
He did feel some misgivings about the whole thing, however, since the law
forbids making a profit on the Sabbath also, and this he was doing. He
admitted it was wrong, but justified it by pointing out how Christians are in
the same fix. Economic factors compel them to work on Sunday, and even if
they have the day off, if they have investments or stock in companies that
operate on Sunday, they too are making a profit on their Sabbath. He
concluded with a statement that the whole subject of the Sabbath is full of
technicalities. How true he was, for the history of the Sabbath has been a
history of the burden of technically. Few concepts have been as abused as the
concept of the Sabbath. Time does not allow us to study how Jesus despised
the abuse of the Sabbath, and of how He refused to be bound by man's
burdensome additions to what God gave as a blessing.
As Christian we ought to have it clear in our minds that we are no longer
under the law with all of its Sabbath regulations. If we were, we are all
storing up the wrath of God for the day of judgment, for we are constantly
violating the Old Testament law in ways that brought the death penalty for
those under the law. If you think you are under the law, every time you turn
on your oven or go out for a dinner on Sunday you sentence yourself to death.
He who lives by the law is fallen from grace says Paul, and must keep the
whole law or perish. Certainly no Christian has any desire to go back and
live under the law after living under grace.
There are many Christians, however, who think of Sunday as just the
Sabbath moved ahead one day. This has come about because the Puritans in
the 16th century began to call Sunday the Sabbath. Before this the church
never thought of Sunday as the Sabbath. Right from biblical days it was
referred to as the Lord's Day, and it had no connection with the Sabbath. The
Sabbath was instituted in Judaism to commemorate the deliverance of Israel
from Egypt, but Sunday is a commemoration of the resurrection of Christ.
Sunday use to be called little Easter because it commemorated on a weekly
basis what Easter does on an annual basis.
The first day of the week came to have more significance in Christianity
than the 7th. Old Israel had its distinct day, and New Israel had its distinct
day as well. With a new covenant, a new deliverance and a new life came a
new day. In Christ all things became new, and this extended even to the
unique day of rest and worship. It was on the first day that God began His
creation, and it was on the first day that Christ rose from the grave conquering
death and became the first fruits of a new creation that would be
spiritual and eternal. As the Spirit of God hovered over the waters of the old
creation when God said, "Let there be light," on the first day, so the Holy
Spirit hovered over the church at Pentecost on the first day of the week, and
again God said, "Let there be light," and the Holy Spirit filled the church, and
the light of truth of was seen by many, and the church was empowered to go
forth as the light of the world.
These events on the first day of the week make it the day of eternal
significance to the church. Christopher Wordsworth has put it into poetry:
On thee, at the creation
The light first had its birth.
On thee, for our salvation,
Christ rose from depths of earth.
On thee, our Lord victorious,
The Spirit sent from heaven,
And thus on thee most glorious
A triple light was given.
It was a day of light and joy on this first day of the week, and what could
be more appropriate than that it should be named after the source of the
physical light of the world and be called Sunday, and after the source of the
spiritual light of the world, and be called the Lord's Day? From the very
beginning the first day of the week became a day of fellowship, joy and
worship in the church. Fasting was forbidden, for it was on the first day of
His resurrection that Jesus took bread with His disciples. Because of that,
Sunday's are not included in the 40 days of Lent. They are feasting days in the
midst of fasting days.
The Sabbath was not just dropped by the church, however. All of the
first Christians were Jews, and they continued to observe the Sabbath and
worship in the temple along with Jews who had not accepted Jesus as the
Messiah. Then on Sunday evening they got together for their distinctive
Christian fellowship and worship. They had to meet in the evening because
Sunday was just a regular workday. They had to work all day and then
worship at night. A good example of such a service is found in Acts 20:7
where we read, "And upon the first day of the week, when the disciples came
together to break bread, Paul preached to them, ready to depart on the
morrow, and continued his speech until midnight." We see it was evening
when they came together to break bread and hear Paul preach. The evening
service was the original service of the church.
As the church began to grow, and as Gentiles came into the church,
Sunday began to push the Sabbath into the background. Gentiles had no
attachment to the Jewish Sabbath, or any of its regulations, and so it fell into
disuse among Gentile churches. This did not happen without some
controversy, however, for Jewish Christians felt that all Christians should be
bound by the Sabbath. This is a clear indication that Jews who became
Christians did not think of themselves as cut off by Israel, but rather that they
were the true Israel faithful to all God's revelation. They failed to recognize
that Christ abolished the burdensome observances of the law, and no longer
expected men to live under the ordinances of the law.
It was the task of the Apostle Paul, whom God choose as the Apostle to the
Gentiles to make this truth clear to the Christians of his day. The Colossians,
for example, were being pressured by the Jews to stick to the law, but Paul
assures them that they are not bound, for God blotted out the hand writing of
ordinances against us, and He took it out of the way nailing it to the cross. In
Col. 2:16 we read, "Let no man, therefore, judge you in meat, or in drink or in
respect of a holy day, or of the new moon, or of the Sabbath days, which are a
shadow of things to come, but the body is of Christ." The Sabbath was
symbolic of a greater day to come, just like the sacrifices of the Old Testament.
But Christ is the real thing and not a shadow. He is the real body and since
His coming we are no longer to hold on to the shadow, but give ourselves to
Him to whom the shadow pointed.
The Sabbath was good, but it had to give way to the best when God gave
His Son. The Jewish leaders finally saw this, and they no longer expected
Gentiles to become good Jews before they were accepted as Christians. As
Gentiles came into the church it became less and less Jewish, and Christ and
His teachings became central rather than the Old Testament law. This process
increased even more as the New Testament was written, and the church had a
new guide for faith and conduct. The church did not ignore the values of the
Sabbath, however, but recognized them as God ordained values. They were
brought over into the observance of Sunday without bringing its burdens. As
Christians gained power and influence Sunday was made a holiday, and work
was prohibited. It became like the Sabbath as a day of rest and worship.
It is this principle of rest that was the main characteristic of the Sabbath.
And this principle goes right back to God, as we see in our text. The Sabbath
of Israel was not origin of the day of rest, for it existed long before Israel was
in existence. We have records of its observance in other nations before the
time of Israel, and Gen. 2 here tells us that it is as ancient as anything could be
because it goes back to the time when God himself took a day off.
Let us remember that both Jews and Christians recognize the value of a
day off because God ordained that one day in 7 be separate from the others.
We often take for granted that this is just natural, but it is not so. If God is
not acknowledged there is no reason to suppose that His concern for man's
blessing is acknowledged either. Many years ago there was an article in Life
Magazine titled "Red China Bids For A Future: The Great Leap Forward." It
made this statement: "On the island of Lappa... China's communist masters
have established a people's commune. The daily toil lasts from 5:00 A. M. till
midnight when the last platoon of weary workers stumbles back to the
barracks. Nineteen hours a day, seven days a week it goes on. The routine
was the same, day in, day out, seven days a week. The only days off were
national holidays." There is nothing natural about one day in seven for rest at
all. It is a matter of revelation, and we have this concept because of God's rest
on the 7th day after He had completed creation. God did not stop until He was
finished, but when He was finished He enjoyed the fruits of His labor. It is an
interesting parallel that God finished creation on Friday, and it was also on
Friday that Jesus on the cross said, "It is finished."
The statement here in Genesis that God rested does not mean that
creation was tiring to the omnipotent God. God does not need rest. The idea
here is that He ceased His activity of creating. He set this day apart and
hallowed it. He made it different and distinct from other days, and in so doing
established the principle of rest on one day in 7. Everything God made was
good, but even so, there is a point at which to stop making what is good. God
introduced into the world a period of time for rest and reflection. This
principle was applied to Israel in the Sabbath, and to the church in Sunday.
As Christians we are not bound to any particular day to apply this principle,
but it must be applied or we lose something that God intended for man's
blessing. In a Jewish novel East River the central character says, "When a
man labors not for a livelihood, but to accumulate wealth, then he is a slave.
Therefore it is that God granted us the Sabbath, for it is by the Sabbath that
we know we are not work animals, born to eat and labor; we are men. It was
by the Sabbath that the Jews proclaimed that they were not slaves, as in
Egypt, but free men."
So it is for us as Christians, for we declare by our day off that we are not
mere animals of toil. We are made in the image of God, and redeemed by the
Son of God. We alone of all creatures can think, pray, worship and grow in
many ways to make life a great experience. The Christian is not just to exist,
but to have life abundant, and this demands that all of his life not be devoted
to work, but that a portion of it be devoted to the up building of his eternal
soul. Sunday is a day to look above and beyond the work-a-day world to the
greater things of life. It is to forget for awhile the necessities of toil, and to
broaden your vision to see there are great luxuries of life that are free to those
who walk with God.
Many men shrink their capacity to enjoy life's best because they never
take time out to walk with God and seek to see life with eternity's values in
view. Men can get so involved in their own goals of life that they lose interest
in all of the things that do not pertain to their work. An unknown poet put it
well:
If your nose is close to the grindstone rough,
And you keep it down there long enough,
You will soon forget there are such things
As a brook that babbles, and bird which sings.
Three things your whole world will compose,
Yourself, the stone, and your worn-off nose.
God never intended for man to live with such a limited horizon. Jesus
had a perfect body and perfect health, and yet He recognized the need to draw
apart to rest and pray. No one had a greater job to do, and no one had a
greater commitment to doing it, and yet we find that the Son, like the Father,
took a day off. In Matt. 11:28 Jesus said, "Come unto me ye that labor and
are heavy laden, and I will give you rest." Rest is a gift of God's grace, and
like all of God's gifts it comes with responsibility. We need to ask ourselves if
we are good stewards of our day off. Do we use it to grow in grace and of the
knowledge of God, or do we use it to become more engrossed in the world?
There may be some who do not truly rest even when they have the chance,
and they do not grow because they never submit their life to Christ. The rest
of God, like the redemption of God, belongs only to those who know Jesus as
personal Lord and Savior. God took a day off for our sake that we might have
a day of rest, but He gave His Son to die for us that we might have eternal rest.
It is sad that men loose the benefits of weekly rest, but it is the greatest tragedy
when they loose eternal rest. If you have never received God's free gift of
salvation in Christ, do so today and God will begin in you a new creation, for
when it comes to salvation, God never takes a day off.
