Home   |   Sermons   |   Articles   |   Beliefs   |   Our Namesake   |   Photos

The Day of Worship

Deuteronomy 5:1–21

by The Rt. Rev. Daniel R. Morse

It is a beautifully significant practice of modern Jews that before fulfilling any specific observance directed in the law, they always first bless God for giving it. There are many things wrong with Judaism, not the least of which is that Jesus Christ is denied as the consummation of the law and the necessity of a new heart before one can do things pleasing to God is unknown. But there is still lurking in Jewish tradition the awareness that the law is not supposed to be a burden to be avoided, but rather a gift of God in which to rejoice.

Those of us who have been granted grace from God to be included in the New Covenant have the Law of God written on our hearts. That is, we desire from our hearts to honor and please God by thankful obedience for his salvation. This obedience is not imposed any longer from external tablets of stone, but it is internalized by the gracious operations of the Holy Spirit.

Deuteronomy 5 and Exodus 20 contain the Sabbath commandment, and Leviticus 23 puts the Sabbath at the head of the list of festivals. Even before the coming of Christ, keeping one day in seven separate unto God was not thought of as burdensome or to be dreaded, and the Bible certainly does not teach us to think of the Sabbath as something Christ has thankfully delivered us from. Rather it is a festival, a celebration of freedom and redemption, a day to be anticipated with growing excitement as the week wears on. The emphasis, or perspective, on the Sabbath is not that of an odious list of don’ts and duties but a positive delight and enjoyment of the Lord’s mercy.

I. Rest

The first clear statement of the Sabbath law in Exodus 20:11 gave God’s example in creation as the reason why we ought to rest. This tells us that there is an enduring character to the Sabbath since it is part of the very created order of things. The Sabbath in the Old Testament period anticipated the coming rest while pointing to the inadequacy of the Old Testament to bring in the promised rest. This is seen in the fact that rest came only at the end of six days of labor. Rest was not yet the possession of God’s people, but was something still future that they must work for. It was always ahead of them, the last day of the week, which they could enjoy only after they had worked all week. Later the rest promised by the Sabbath would be the gift of God in Christ’s resurrection.

In the second statement of the law in Deuteronomy 5:15, the reason given is not creation but redemption. God’s people are to rest in commemoration of the rest from slavery granted by God. But Hebrews 3 & 4 indicate that the Israelites failed to enter that rest because of unbelief. They rebelled against the very redemptive rest God had given them that was to point them forward to Christ, who is the rest that remained for the people of God. Hebrews 4:9 tells us that there is still a rest remaining for us, that is, the eternal Sabbath of heaven, when all wearying struggle against sin will be over, and it is that assurance of final redemption that we now commemorate in our own observance of the Lord’s Day.

II. Work

The command to rest on the Sabbath day is given in the context of a command to work. The importance of that is often lost on a pleasure hungry world that views work as only a necessary evil instead of the means of bringing the whole creation under the dominion of God and of finding true rest and enjoyment. That is, one cannot have the rest that God gives without being obedient to God’s command to engage in productive labor.

This explains why so many in our day are restless on the one hand and fail to appreciate the Lord’s Day on the other. They may be engaged in honorable work, but since they do not have the motive or intent to glorify God by bringing everything under the dominion of Christ, their work is not satisfying to them, and when Sunday rolls around they do not know how to rest. The weekend for them is only an attempt to gratify themselves – in the words of Simon and Garfunkel, “A big, bright green pleasure machine that they need to hurry and get because they are almost nearly gone.”

The rest of the Lord’s Day is not a rest of inactivity. Jesus indicated this when he said in response to the Pharisees’ challenge of his Sabbath actions that his Father, who has been in his Sabbath rest since the seventh day of creation, works until now (John 5:16,17). God has not stopped working altogether; he has simply changed to a different kind of work—from creating to providing and cultivating.

In like manner, our Sabbath rest includes working for God and taking pleasure in the work of our hands produced in the other six days (Exodus 31:16,17). We cease one kind of work to pursue another, and that other work is public and private worship and deeds of necessity and mercy. We may complain that our busy schedules do not allow us time to fellowship together or to help those in need, but God supplies the time by giving us one day in seven when we are liberated from the confinement of our schedule. Of course, if we squander the whole day on our own pleasures, naps, etc., then we will still have no time to please God and be refreshed in him.

By the repetition of sabbaths God teaches us that blessing and freedom don’t belong to us but to him, and he gives them to us when we walk in his ways. Many think that happiness comes from manipulating money and circumstances to please ourselves; that happiness is to be found somewhere within human experience and abilities, and it will be ours if we just push the right buttons. But by setting aside one day in seven in which we are to honor him, God is telling us that there is more to life than what we do. When we honor Him on that day, we are confessing that what he does is far more significant than what we do in the production of blessing and freedom.

This was the lesson of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil in the Garden of Eden. The garden was not Adam and Eve’s to do with as they pleased. Their enjoyment of the garden was not a permanent, irrevocable grant made to them by God, but rather was dependent upon their obedience to God. The tree was the reminder that blessing and happiness are not to be sought directly and do not come in response to our pursuing them. Instead, they come indirectly as byproducts of our seeking first the kingdom of God and his righteousness. Because God is our God, we can rest knowing he will care for us.

The repetition of sabbaths also teaches us that blessing and freedom don’t come by uninterrupted work, pursuit of pleasure, worries and fear of missing something. We are no longer slaves to these things, and the Lord’s Day is the weekly declaration that we are free. Seven days of livelihood come not from unending slavery to our own efforts, but from six days of work. God gives us 52 days of paid vacation every year.

III. The change of the day

We see a pattern of progress in the unfolding revelation of God in the Bible. This is illustrated in the experience of Israel. Israel moved from the captivity to the wilderness wandering to the rest in Canaan. Rest was always ahead of them and not yet consummated. They were moving toward rest, but they did not enter it.

The consummation of rest was accomplished by Christ at his resurrection, which is the reason that we now worship and rest on the first day of the week rather than the last day. To continue observing the seventh day is to remain in the pre-consummation shadows of relative non-rest and to refuse to come out into the full light of the rest won by Christ on the first day of the week. Hebrews 3:16–19 makes it very clear that we have entered into the rest. This means that now all our daily labor is transformed into a kind of rest in the sense that on the first day of the week our batteries are recharged and we are instructed in the Word of God as to how we may rest in God the other six days of the week. Our labor is not a frantic seeking for rest and security, but rather a resting in the peace already completed by Christ. And we are no longer laboring for a rest that is yet ahead of us (laboring the first six days and resting at the end), but we rest first and labor afterwards in the strength of that rest won for us by Jesus (resting the first day and then laboring).

Since the Lord’s Day should have such a prominent place in our thinking and acting with respect to the other six days of the week, it is a good idea for us to make adequate preparation for the day as the week progresses. As Sunday draws closer, our attention ought to be fixed on that queen of days so that our thinking and feeling may reach a joyful climax in the celebration of God’s goodness to his people. This especially means that we should be careful to get enough sleep on Saturday night lest we come into God’s presence too tired to enjoy him or benefit others around us. The legalist says to himself that since Sunday does not begin until 12:00 midnight on Saturday he is honoring the Sabbath if he gets home and in bed by then. But then he finds himself too sleepy to give his full attention to God the next morning. Our mental and physical abilities ought to be at their peak on Sunday.

May God bless these thoughts to us for our application.

Return to Top

All material on this site is copyright © 2008 St. Barnabas Anglican Church, except where an author is named. In such cases, the author retains all rights.