Dear Pastor, Is It Legalistic To Promote The Sabbath Day?
Question: Dear Pastor, Is it Legalistic to Promote the Sabbath?
The short answer is very simple: No, not at all. Quite the opposite, in fact. But, I suspect you’d like a slightly more developed answer than that.
In many ways, we come at the Lord’s Day all wrong, and we lose the race right out of the gate. Your question—is it legalistic to promote the Sabbath—seems to come at the question from the angle that the Sabbath is this restrictive, perhaps burdensome thing. You may very well have encountered some people who do take some sort of perverse delight in severity, and they tried to convince you of their peculiar legalistic application of the Sabbath. But I would caution against framing the Sabbath itself or the mere promotion of honoring it as something that is legalistic. We’ve got to flip our thinking on this issue entirely. Far from being a legalistic burden, it’s time we in the church started thinking again about the Sabbath the way Jesus does: as a blessing and not a burden.
Let me start out by asking this: What would you think if someone suggested that it was legalistic to promote the Sixth Commandment or the Seventh Commandment? Is it legalistic to promote the idea that we should not murder other people? Is it legalistic to promote the notion that adultery is a net moral negative? No, of course not. You’d say, “That’s not legalism. That’s just basic Christian godliness!” You’d be right. We need to ask: why the different standard of measurement when it comes to the Fourth Commandment?
If the rest of God’s Ten Commandments are viewed as good, wholesome, and aids to godliness, then it stands to reason we should view the Sabbath and the Fourth Commandment in that vein as well. Rest assured, as I’m saying all this, I’m not assuming you do think of the Lord’s Day (or Christian Sabbath) (1) in such a negative light. But, I’m not at all surprised if you’ve encountered some friends who do have such a mindset. I’m saying everything here that I am because I want you to have some good, warm-hearted, biblical “ammunition,” so to speak, if you’re pressed with this idea again.
Think about this: what would you do if you did not have anything else to do? If you were free from constraints—the ordinary chores that typify the rest of your life—think of all the things you could do. Think of all the joys, all the delights you could fill your day with.
Here’s a better way for us to begin reorienting our thinking about the Sabbath: Every week, God gives you precisely that kind of day. He serves up the first day of the week to you and says, “Here is a day where you are free to fill it with the things your soul needs—things you want to do, not things you have to do. Here is a day,” says the Lord, “to enjoy me.”
Yes, there are works of necessity and mercy. Our Reformed confessions are clear about that; they have their place. In the main, the Sabbath is a day, free from ordinary constraints, where you get to delight in the Lord and his blessings and benefits. Here is a day to refresh and recalibrate your soul.
The Sabbath is a gift of grace given to us by our gracious God. It is not given as a legalistic burden, but as a blessing of grace. Let’s quickly outline a few ways that the Bible presents the Sabbath as a blessing, and not a burden.
Blessing At Creation
It’s good for us to remember that the Sabbath has a place in God’s created order, before sin had ever entered into the picture. Woven into the very fabric of pristine, untainted creation, God placed sabbath and rest. Traditionally, there are three institutions that are listed as “creation ordinances,” that is, these things which God instituted at the very dawn of time and shall continue to abide for the good of the human race until Christ one day returns: marriage, labor, and Sabbath. All three of these things were ordained of God and existed in sinless Eden.
The Scripture tells us that on the seventh day God rested. Genesis 2:2-3 tells us, “And on the seventh day God finished his work that he had done, and he rested on the seventh day from all his work that he had done. So God blessed the seventh day and made it holy, because on it God rested from all his work that he had done in creation.” From the very get-go, the Sabbath day was a thing of blessing. It is from that creational foundation that God hands down a subsequent command regarding the Sabbath when he gives the Ten Commandments at Sinai.
Blessing At Sinai
It’s important to remember that, in Exodus 20, as Moses is handing down the Law received from God on the tablets of stone—when the Israelites encounter this commandment on the Sabbath—the Sabbath concept was no new idea to them. It was an old idea, embedded in creation. As with all the other commands God gives in the Ten Commandments (or what is sometimes called the Decalogue), they come from a position of freedom, redemption, and grace—not bondage or burden.
Recall that before God even lists out the Ten Commandments, the whole preface to the Decalogue reminds Israel of her redeemed status: “I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery,” (Exodus 20:2). God has redeemed them. They are His. He rescued them by his mighty hand and his outstretched arm, and it was all a work of his strong and marvelous grace. Thus, these commands are the evidences of life. They are not legalistic chores meant to curry God’s favor. Rather, they are the bounds and blessings and parameters by which God’s people may now live and enjoy the redeemed life. All the commands—including the one regarding the Sabbath—are blessings and bounds meant to be walked in by the redeemed.
Also, just think for a moment about the context in which Israel was receiving that Fourth Commandment. They had just been rescued from four centuries of slavery under the heavy hand of pagan Pharaoh. Do you think Pharaoh cared at all about the Sabbath commands of the Hebrew God? Do you think Pharaoh ever gave the slaves a day off? Hardly. After 400 years of unrelenting toil and bondage, the God of the Hebrews comes along and says, “For one day in each week of seven, you shall not labor. You shall rest.” What an absolute mercy.
Blessing In Christ
Briefly, let us simply note Christ’s own reminder regarding the purpose of the Sabbath. In Mark chapter 2, the Pharisees are fussing at Jesus because they observed his disciples plucking heads of grain for their hungry stomachs on the Sabbath Day. Jesus then adroitly rebukes them, citing the example of David during the time of Abiathar the high priest, and then flatly concludes by stating in vv. 27-28, “The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath. So the Son of Man is lord even of the Sabbath.”
The Sabbath was made for man. It is for his good, for his benefit, for his blessing. Man was not created because God made the Sabbath, and then needed somebody to occupy the role of keeping the Sabbath-associated rules. No, God knew that man needed a day of rest and gladness. The Sabbath is a day for doing good, not a day for starving oneself out of principle (to use the Mark 2 example with which the Pharisees were trying to trap Christ’s disciples).
Conclusion
Where people can get all tangled up in the weeds comes in the application of the Sabbath. To be sure and to be frank, there are certain things that we just should not do on Sunday (the Lord’s Day) that we have ample opportunity to do on the other six days of the week. A lot of folks are overly skittish about having that conversation these days, and I think the church in our day is the poorer for it. It would aid our spiritual health and sanctification a great deal, I think, if we gave some more pointed discussion (and perhaps repentance and readjustment) regarding a robust keeping of the Lord’s Day. The Lord’s Day is a good day; it’s a holy day, and it’s meant for certain activities and not others. But that is perhaps a conversation for another time.
There are also some questions folks may have about the shifting of the Sabbath from the end of the week (Saturday) to the first day of the week (Sunday), on what we call the Lord’s Day. That’s another good conversation to have, but for now, do note: the Westminster Confessional has no qualms about unabashedly calling Sunday the “Christian Sabbath” in this post-Resurrection age in which we live. (2)
But, at its base, to conclude with your original question: Is it legalistic to promote the Sabbath? No, not at all. In fact, the Sabbath is a blessing.
All of God’s commands are blessings. I wonder if we really believe that? Do we view God’s commands as these restrictive boundaries denying us some pleasure we wish to have? Or do we regard them as good and safe paths in which to walk, and that in keeping there is life and “fullness of joy” (Psalm 16:11)?
The Sabbath is meant for the rest of our weary bodies and the good of our needy souls. It is meant for the fullness of our joy in Christ. In the same way that you’d want to squeeze every last drop of gladness out of a birthday or anniversary, when it’s a day appointed for delight and celebration, so too with the Sabbath. It’s not legalism to delight in your wife on your anniversary. It’s not legalism to delight in Christ on the Lord’s Day. So promote it. Mine it for all its worth.
Let’s delight in God’s day.
(1) We often refer to Sunday as “the Lord’s Day” (what our Reformed confessions and catechisms refer to as the “Christian Sabbath”). Cf. Westminster Confession of Faith 21.7; Heidelberg Catechism 104.
(2) WCF 21.7