The heavens and the earth were
completed with everything that was in them.
2 By the seventh day God finished the work that he had been
doing, and he ceased on the seventh day all the work that he had been
doing. 3 God blessed the
seventh day and made it holy because on it he ceased all the work that he had
been doing in creation (Genesis 2:1-3
NET).
God’s rhythm of work and rest is built into creation and
covenant. He commands his people:
Remember to observe the Sabbath day
by keeping it holy. 9 You
have six days each week for your ordinary work,
10 but the seventh day is a Sabbath day of rest dedicated to
the LORD your God. On that day no one in your household may do any work (Exodus
20:8-10 NLT).
To observe the Sabbath is not just to cease all activity and
reflect on God. It is to follow God’s example and live in God’s creation
pattern of work and rest.
But how do we keep a day holy? First, we must consider the
concept of holiness. To be holy is to be unique or set apart, like God. In the Old
Testament, a variety of things are holy:
- Places: tabernacle and sanctuary – places for worship and fellowship with God
- Objects: sacred items used in the service of the tabernacle
- People: priests and Levites who serve in the tabernacle
Each of
these is set apart, or “consecrated,” for unique tasks. They are holy for the
purpose of worship, service and fellowship with God. Holy time is no
different. It is set aside for worship, service and fellowship with God. Like
all consecrated things, holy time can be desecrated, profaned, made common.
How?
- By ignoring its sacredness, treating it like any other day, continuing regular work (Nehemiah 13:15-22)
- By ignoring God, giving no time to worship and no gratitude for God’s gifts
- By making it part of a false show of holiness to hide a life of injustice (Isaiah 1:10-15)
- By cutting rest short out of a greedy desire to make profit (Amos 8:4-5)
So, how do we keep the Sabbath holy? God commands us to rest and remember.
We must cease from normal work. In resting, we
imitate God, who rested from his work of Creation (Genesis 2:2-3; Exodus 20:11)
We rest to remember God’s
deliverance. “Remember that you were once slaves in Egypt, but the LORD
your God brought you out with his strong hand and powerful arm. That is why the
LORD your God has commanded you to rest on the Sabbath day” (Deuteronomy 5:15).
Failing to rest is like returning to Egypt, where the Israelites were enslaved to unceasing toilsome labor (Exodus 5:5). God saved them from that. The Sabbath prevents re-enslavement to relentless work and gives the gift of refreshing rest to the whole community, including slaves and animals.
Rest involves
trusting God to meet our needs even if we don’t run ourselves ragged. We
must acknowledge our human limitations and realize that we cannot go non-stop
for 16 hours a day, seven days a week. Such a pace is unsustainable.
Rest reminds us that
we worship God, not the wealth we acquire through our work (Matthew 6:24).
Sabbath gives us time to refocus our priorities and remember that God is the
only reward worth pursuing.
We rest so that our work can be properly directed.
Sabbath offers a chance to remember Who we work for and the kingdom purpose and
goal of our work; we rediscover that our
work in the world, if it is to be worthwhile, must participate in his work in the world (as Jesus’ work
did; John 5:17). We join God’s rest so we can join God’s work!
Eugene Peterson expresses this truth well in his book, Christ
Plays in Ten Thousand Places (117-18):
If there is no Sabbath – no regular
and commanded not-working, not-talking – we soon become totally absorbed in
what we are doing and saying, and God’s work is either forgotten or
marginalized. Un-sabbathed, our work becomes the entire context in which we
define our lives. We lose God-consciousness, God-awareness, sightings of
resurrection…
This is a most difficult command to
keep, a most difficult practice to cultivate. It is one of the most abused and
distorted practices of the Christian life…
But I don’t see any way out of it:
if we are going to live appropriately in the creation, we must keep the
Sabbath. We must stop running around long enough to see what God has done and
is doing. We must shut up long enough to hear what God has said and is saying.
All our ancestors agree that without silence and stillness there is no
spirituality, no God-attentive, God-responsive life. . .
If we are not to simply contribute
a religious dimension to the disintegration of our world, join company with the
mobs who are desecrating the creation with their hurry and hype in frenzy and
noise, we must attend to what we have been given and the One who gives it to
us. One large step in the renewal of creation today, this field upon which the
resurrection Christ plays plays with such exuberance, is to not take the next
step: stand where we are, listen to our Lord: attend . . . adore.
Rest gives us time to
delight in God and his work. When God stopped working, he sat back and
looked over his work; he enjoyed its beauty and appreciated its order and
function; he pronounced it “very good” (Genesis 1:31-2:3). We, too, should stop
and stand in awe of God’s world. We should pause our technology and virtual
reality and praise God for his creation reality.
Maltbie D.
Babcock beautifully expresses the benefits of this creation awareness in his
famous hymn, This Is My Father's World:
This is my Father's world
And to my listening ears
All nature sings and round me rings
The music of the spheres
This is my Father's world
I rest me in the thought
Of rocks and trees of skies and seas
His hand the wonders wrought
This is my Father's world
The birds their carols raise
The morning light the lily white
Declare their Maker's praise
This is my Father's world
He shines in all that's fair
In the rustling grass I hear Him pass
He speaks to me everywhere
This is my Father's world
O let me ne'er forget
That though the wrong seems oft so
strong
God is the Ruler yet
This is my Father's world
The battle is not done
Jesus who died shall be satisfied
And earth and heaven be one
As appealing and life-giving as all this sounds, we must
guard against missing the point. Jesus’ response to Sabbath-observance in his
own day warns us against extremism.
First, rest does not mean ceasing to do good. Sabbath
observance should not keep us from blessing others and giving life, healing and
wholeness. Human needs are more important than strict Sabbath observance
(Matthew 12:10-13). The law is not meant to prevent the hungry from eating
(Matthew 12:3-5). Nor is it meant to restrict God’s work.
Second, Sabbath is not about a big “not-to-do list.” To focus on forbidden activities is to see only
the rule and miss the gift. “The Sabbath was made for people, not people for
the Sabbath” (Mark 2:27). It was given to keep our lives in a healthy rhythm,
not to bury us under burdensome restrictions. When we follow the Lord of the
Sabbath, we need not be burdened by a heavy yoke of rules, for his yoke is easy
and his burden is light (Matthew 11:30).
The Sabbath, then, is holy
time set apart to remember who we are and who God is. We remember that he
is Creator and we are Creature (Exodus 20:11), he is Redeemer and we are
redeemed (Deuteronomy 5:15). In rest, we join God’s creation rhythm. In rest,
we stop and adore God. In rest, we refocus our lives so we spend them in his
service for the sake of his kingdom.
So as you go through this Advent season, when will you pause to wonder at the glory of Emmanuel? How could you rest in God’s creative and redemptive blessings? When could you stop to savor the peace and joy Messiah brings and share them with a world that needs his rest?
