The Danger of Neglecting the Sabbath

Intro

The talking heads of political pundits and cultural analysts theorize incessantly over the cause of the current state of things. Almost always with the tone of how did everything get so bad? We want causes to our culture's current death slide in depravity, hoping we can make course corrections as we slowly watch our culture, what's left of it, circle the drain. But in truth, as much as these analysts will try to pin it on one thing, it's really isn't just one thing, unless that one thing is so general that it really doesn't provide real practical help out of this mess. So we could say, obviously, that our culture's situation is caused by our refusal to keep covenant with the triune God of Scripture. Which is absolutely true, but that only begs the question: how have we broke covenant with God? And the answer to that is not just one thing, but a million little things. A million little compromises with the world, the flesh, and the devil. One of those compromises is the neglect of the Sabbath. Some of you have seen this change in your own lifetime, while the rest of us don't really have any experience of anything different from what we have right now.

Scripture very often draws a very straight line from a neglect of the Sabbath and the decline of a nation. And this is a repeated theme throughout the prophets. Repeatedly, they call the people of God to repent by turning back to God and one of the tangible demonstrations of their repentance was a return to keeping the sabbath. But why do you think it is that the Sabbath is so important? Put another way, what is it about the Sabbath that, when neglected, invites God's wrath? Because last week's sermon was highly technical, since together we did some deep foundation level theology, I really want this sermon to be intensely practical. Especially since next week we begin evening worship, and I have said nothing at all about why that might be important.

The reason the Sabbath is so important, and why its neglect invites God's wrath, is its function as a confession of your dependence on God. You can discern someone's loyalty by what they will give up for you. Do you love the Lord enough to give up your life? What about giving up your money? What about your family, your wife or children? Abraham's loyalty was tested when the Lord asked him to sacrifice his only son, Isaac. And Jesus said, "If anyone comes to me and does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, yes, and even his own life, he cannot be my disciple." (Lk. 14:26). The point the Lord is making is not that you can't follow him and have a family, or money, or whatever it may be, but that you have those things in their proper place, with the Lord taking preeminence.

The Sabbath is a way to show that dependence in spades. We give up our time, resting from our labor for one day; we give up our bodies, offering them as living sacrifices in worship; we give our tithe; we give our wives and children, for in worship we see that God as a greater claim on them than we do. The celebration of the Sabbath is the clearest evidence that a people depend on the Lord. By remembering/observing the sabbath, we confess our dependence on God. So by neglecting, we shake our fist at God, and thumb our finger at him saying, we don't need you. We'll work 24/7, and we'll keep all the profits, and we'll build bigger barns, and we'll harness nature, and will disenchant the world, so that we never have to be reminded that we belong to you, and owe you everything. And that's how a nation gets to where our nation is today. Because people stopped calling the Sabbath their delight and because churches told them this was OK.

So as we look at our text this morning from the last few verses of Isaiah 58 and ask, how can you neglect the Lord's day? What we find is we neglect the sabbath by going your own way, by pursuing your own pleasure, and by engaging in idle talk. And as we do, I am going to suggest some very practical ways that we has a church, a small part of the church catholic, can begin to build a culture that once again calls the sabbath our delight.

Is. 58:13-14

At the end of v. 13 the Lord gives us three practical ways to neglect the Sabbath, His holy day: by going your own way, by pursuing your own pleasure, and by talking idly. To understand how we can honor the Sabbath, calling it a delight, we need to pay heed to these things making sure that we instead follow God's way, take delight in Him, as we speak of those things that edify, namely the mighty works of God. For with a delight in the sabbath comes a delight in God, and with delight in God comes rich blessings.

By going your own way

What does the Lord mean by "going your own way"? The scriptures have much to say about which way you are going. Setting out two antithetical paths, the path of the righteous which leads to glory and immortality, and the path of the wicked, which leads to death. The church was first called the way (Acts 9:2) as a description of those who were following Jesus on the way of salvation. By describing life in these terms the scriptures teach us to conform our lives to a certain way of being in the world and to avoid other ways.

Going your own way, as opposed to Going in God's way with respect to the Sabbath is then a rejection of God's way of ordering our time. Going your own way is a refusal to imitate God by resting from your works as God did from His. Therefor to keep the sabbath Holy, to honor it as the Lord's day you must cease from your work of subduing and ruling over creation. For six days, you must work to order and fill the world, for the glory of God, but for one day you must cease from that work.

Here the Pharisees went wrong (the puritans are often misconstrued along the same lines). Jesus, in one of His conflicts with them in John 6 said this, "My Father is working until now, and I am working." (Jn 5:17). He said this because the Pharisees where seeking to persecute him for healing the man who was lame for 47 years on the Sabbath. The particular reason that upset them, was Jesus told him to carry his sleeping mat, which in their tradition (based on Jer. 17:21) was considered work that was not fitting for the Sabbath. So Jesus says my father is working and so am I, by which he means that have missed defined what work God has called them to cease from. If this man's job was carrying bed rolls, that was how he made his living, then it is doubtful the Lord would have asked him to do what he did. Jesus is teaching them that the work he is doing on the Sabbath is consistent with the principal of Sabbath rest because His work led to human flourishing. It led to a man made in the image of God at creation, being remade in a re-creation.

But you could just as easily go your own way on the sabbath, by refusing to work for six out of the seven days each week. You see, to go your own way means to reject the six days of labor and one day of rest. So we dare not think it is just about rest. It has much more to do with an attitude of submission. One that acknowledges dependence on God, by offering to him our work every day, and then ceasing from our labor as a reminder that He alone gives the increase. For unless the Lord builds the house, those who build it labor in vain.

You neglect the Lord's day when you go your own by not resting from your work as God did from His. And not just not resting, but not delighting in rest, that is not delighting in the one who upholds you while you rest.

By pursuing your own pleasure

You may think OK, great I love rest, you don't have to tell me twice not to work on Sunday. But the prophet continues, and as he does, he reveals another layer to what it is when you neglect the Sabbath. Since part of the way we dishonor the Sabbath, is by seeking your own pleasure. Here we begin to see the nature of this rest the Lord invites us into.

A question comes when we consider the prophets exhortation is there a time when it is OK to seek our own pleasure? What I mean is, can we on six days seek our own pleasure, just so long as on the Sabbath we what—seek the Lord's? Obviously no. Just as the prophet did not mean you could go your own way six days a week, but on the Sabbath you must go the Lord's way. So what does the prophet mean by seeking your own pleasure?

To understand that we need to look more closely at the context of this text in Isaiah. Earlier in ch. 58 the Lord condemned their religious practice of fasting as empty because it was done as a way to manipulate God, to get Him to do what they wanted. Instead of fasting, he says they should pursue justice, i.e. love their neighbor. Essentially, he says it's not about fasting, it's about feasting, which is what the Sabbath is all about. So there is a self seeking way to go about fasting, there is also a self-seeking way to approach the Sabbath to.

By seeking your own pleasure, I take the prophet to mean that you use God's gracious offer of rest for your own selfish ends. The clue is found in the prophet's description of the Sabbath. He calls the Sabbath "my holy day" and interestingly the Hebrew in the middle of v. 13 which the ESV translates "and the holy day of the Lord honorable" does not have day there, it just says, "the holiness of the Lord honorable." The Sabbath is a delight because of the holiness of the Lord. Which makes the nature of the Sabbath rest holy. Seeking your own pleasure is then seeking rest without respect to God.

The day is Holy, set apart for a holy use, which means we cease from our labor and we rest by engaging in worship, festivities, and acts of charity and mercy. The rest of the Lord's Day is not idleness, not a slothful laying about, but "spending the whole time in the public and private exercises of God's worship, except so much as is to be taken up in the works of necessity and mercy." (WSC, #60). By that the Catechism doesn't mean we should be at church all day, but rather that the activities of the day should be suffused by an attitude of worship.

Since on other days, your time must be taken up with your regular work, and aside from meditating on the word of God throughout the day, or singing psalms and hymns to yourself or to one another, and the brief times we spend in personal devotions, and family worship, you scarcely have time to think about the things of God. So the Lord has given you one day in seven, which he has sanctified for the purpose of worship, a celebration of his great works of creation and redemption.

So a neglect of the Sabbath is seeking your own pleasure on the Lord's Holy day, which is seeking a rest that is not worshipful, a rest that is selfish, and has as its end, not the glory of God, but of man. Seeking your own pleasure is the absence of delight in God and His Holy day.

By engaging in idle talk

You also neglect the Lord's day by engaging in idle talk. Like each of the other descriptions of neglect, the prophet does not mean that on six days you can have idle talk, but on the Lord's day you must restrain your speech from idle talk. No, always we are to be governing our speech, not engaging in gossip, slander, and unclean speech. Notice how many of Paul's exhortations in his admonition to the Ephesians are about speech.

“Therefore, having put away falsehood, let each one of you speak the truth with his neighbor, for we are members one of another. Be angry and do not sin; do not let the sun go down on your anger, and give no opportunity to the devil. Let the thief no longer steal, but rather let him labor, doing honest work with his own hands, so that he may have something to share with anyone in need. Let no corrupting talk come out of your mouths, but only such as is good for building up, as fits the occasion, that it may give grace to those who hear. And do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, by whom you were sealed for the day of redemption. Let all bitterness and wrath and anger and clamor and slander be put away from you, along with all malice. Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ forgave you.” (Ephesians 4:25–32, ESV)

As Christians, we are "to speak the truth," guard against "corrupting talk," and instead use our speech to build up and edify others, and we are to avoid slander. Not just on the Lord's day, mind you, but everyday of your life. So what does the prophet mean by idle talk?

He means speech that is the evidence of "going your own way and seeking your own pleasure." Some commentators call this "shop-talk." You speak in ways that prove you are not mindful that the day has not changed from your daily work-a-day patterns of speech, and those befitting the holiness of a day the Lord set apart for you to honor him with.

If out of the heart the mouth speaks (Lk. 6:45), then what must be in the heart of a person who on the Lord's day, when our theme is God, is taken up with idle talk? It must be that his heart is not filled with delight in the Lord. When a man is so impressed with his own work, that he can't stop talking about it for one day out of the week, that man has missed entirely what the Lord's day is given to accomplish—namely his delight in the Lord.

Notice v. 14, "then you shall take delight in the Lord." There is a cause and effect relationship between the sabbath and delight in God. When you neglect the sabbath, delight in God wanes; when you keep the sabbath, calling it your delight, then your delight in God grows.

Conclusion

Neglecting the Sabbath has deleterious effects first on the faith, then its trickle down impact has left the family and state bereft of delight in God. Which is why the Session is so eager to add an evening service. Why this ever disappeared as a habit for the church is beyond me. But its effects are obvious—nominal Christianity. A faith that is an inch deep and a mile wide. An ever-increasing cohort of those who check none in the religious box. Not, because their parents took their faith seriously, but because they didn't. Because faithful membership in a church meant attendance one Sunday a month, and these evangelical parents wore their faith like a t-shirt that said, "I know the plans I have for you," but whose only experience of Jesus came from The Chosen.

But lest you think they bear all the blame, the real problem was the pastors and teachers who told them peace, peace, peace, and the temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord. These false prophets healed the wounds of the church lightly, feeding them a steady diet of Doritos, engineered with the perfect amount of salt, fat, and sugar, to keep them coming back for cheap grace, ensconcing them safely in protective hardened layer of fat, so that they never heard a hard word of sin and repentance, and grace that cost Jesus His life.

The engine of the reformation is the preaching of the word. Calvin, and the Company of Pastors in Geneva made sure that the people had access to the preach word every single day of the week. And your elders want the same for you—as much contact with the word of God as possible.

The early church had carried over the habit from the practice of the synagogue, which was a holdover from temple worship of morning and evening sacrifice. So in Acts 20:7-12 we see the Church gathered on the Lord's day for worship, and Paul preached all day long, and well into the evening, well past midnight. And Eutychus, exhausted from the heat, fell asleep and fell from the window he sat in to his death. Until the Lord used Paul to raise him from the dead. Now preachers certainly should recognize the natural limitations of their hearers, which is why I don't preach for two hours like the puritans used too. But the principle of beginning your day with worship and ending your day with worship remains useful to help the people of God sanctify the whole day as an Holy day of rest.

And notice as I close, the blessing God promises for those who call the sabbath a delight.

"I will make you ride on the heights of the earth; I will feed you with the heritage of Jacob your father." (Is. 58:14)

That expression "ride on the heights of the earth" describes the bountiful blessing of a land that produces every good thing. It is drawn from Deut. 32 and the song of Moses.

“He made him ride on the high places of the land, and he ate the produce of the field, and he suckled him with honey out of the rock, and oil out of the flinty rock. Curds from the herd, and milk from the flock, with fat of lambs, rams of Bashan and goats, with the very finest of the wheat— and you drank foaming wine made from the blood of the grape.” (Deuteronomy 32:13–14, ESV)

That is the picture of a land dripping with milk and honey, a foretaste of the age to come, when in glory we will be invited to "a feast of rich food, a feast of well-aged wine, of rich food full of marrow, of aged wine well refined." (Is. 25:6). That is what the Lord promises to those who delight in His sabbath, who delight in Him. Which is why the Sabbath is always a feast day, not a fast day. We celebrate in the Eucharist, a rich sacramental meal of Jesus' body and blood. We feed on Him by faith, when mystically we commune with Christ in the supper. The early church carried that celebration into an agape (love) feast, where they shared a whole meal together of whatever rich provisions they could share. For many, it was the best meal of the week. This should be carried into the rest of the day when we engage in festivities, with fellowship and play as we rejoice before the Lord.

The Lord gives you the sabbath as a Holy day of rest so that you will have time to rest from your work, to worship him, and delight in His abundant goodness. A failure to delight in the Lord's day will invite God's judgement. But,

“If you turn back your foot from the Sabbath, from doing your pleasure on my holy day, and call the Sabbath a delight and the holy day of the LORD honorable; if you honor it, not going your own ways, or seeking your own pleasure, or talking idly; then you shall take delight in the LORD, and I will make you ride on the heights of the earth; I will feed you with the heritage of Jacob your father, for the mouth of the LORD has spoken.” (Isaiah 58:13–14, ESV)

Charge

Failing to delight in the Lord's day will invite God’s judgment. So plan to honor the Lord's day, and learn to delight in it, for God will richly bless those who go in His way, taking pleasure in Him, and telling of His mighty works of creation and redemption. To help you do just that, next week we will begin and end our Lord's day in worship. Amen.