One of the words used to describe the worldview of the culture in which we all swim is secularism, or sometimes called naturalism, which describes a lifestyle of preoccupation with the visible, material world to the neglect of the world of the spiritual. The result of swimming in this polluted water has been, in my view, a largescale disregard of the fourth commandment by Christians and consequent loss of its benefits. The lost benefits are understanding the eternal value of work and understanding the need to regularly shut out the secular world to be renewed and reconnected to the Spiritual Being who created us. This episode seeks to recover what is often lost by the neglect of the fourth commandment.
One of the complexities of faithfulness to Jesus through obedience to his moral law is understanding how to apply the fourth commandment in today’s world. As I mentioned in the first episode of this series, there are three categories of law. There is ceremonial law, religious rituals practiced in the OT, which are no longer binding, having been fulfilled in Christ. There is civil law. It provides universal principles of just treatment in our horizontal relationships in society. But those laws were for the theocracy of Israel, which no longer exists. The third category is moral law, which does continue into the NT. As Jesus explicitly taught,
Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them. For truly, I say to you, until heaven and earth pass away, not an iota, not a dot, will pass from the Law until all is accomplished. Therefore whoever relaxes one of the least of these commandments and teaches others to do the same will be called least in the kingdom of heaven, but whoever does them and teaches them will be called great in the kingdom of heaven (Mt 5:17-19).
In fact, in this same sermon, Jesus taught that the scribes and Pharisee’s understanding of the Law was not strict enough. The prohibition against murder covered not just the physical act but hostility towards another that injured his soul by treating him with anger, attacking his character, or making him feel stupid. The prohibition against adultery covered not just the outward act by the inner heart lust for another man’s wife. The OT moral law was not delegitimized by Jesus; to the contrary, Jesus sets a moral standard that goes way beyond the external way if was often interpreted. Moreover, these commandments are the path to LIFE, the path to loving God and others, which we were created to do and be most fulfilled by following. So, the fourth commandment cannot be thrown away as given only to Israel. It is part of the moral law.
Yet, its application is complex because it has a ceremonial component—setting aside one day a week for worship, and a civil component—requiring the whole country to stop conducting business on the Sabbath. Adding to the complexity is the fact that the early Christians changed the day of worship from the Saturday Sabbath of Judaism to Sunday, the Lord’s Day, because Jesus was raised from the dead on the first day of the week. Paul went to the synagogue to preach on Saturday and met with the Christians to worship and celebrate communion on Sunday. The early Christians did not stay home from work to worship on the first day of the workweek, Sunday. This was not the cultural practice in any area of the world. It was like our Monday, the first day of the workweek. For the most part the early Christians who were spread across the Roman Empire were slaves and those with low status. They had no power to get their culture to give them off on the first day of the week to worship Jesus. So they met for worship after work, which explains why Paul was preaching until midnight in Acts 20. Sunday, the first day of the week has been celebrated by Christians as the DAY OF WORSHIP since Christ’s resurrection. But Sunday was not a DAY OF REST FROM WORK until three hundred years later, when Constantine made Sunday a day of rest for the Roman Empire. Refraining from work on Sunday cannot be a moral absolute. If it were, we would have seen widespread rebellion by Christian slaves in the Roman world by refusing to work on Sundays.
I believe the core principle in the fourth commandment is to “set apart” one day per week to commune with God our lover, to restore our soul, and recover God’s perspective on creation. I also believe that the fourth commandment gives us a creation ordinance concerning work—that there is a built-in pattern that God designed into creation that follows his pattern—six days of work and one day of rest. We’ll look at these components in a moment. But let’s not overlook the way this commandment begins—with the significance God places on our work.
Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy. Six days you shall labor, and do all your work, but the seventh day is a Sabbath to the Lord your God. On it you shall not do any work, you, or your son, or your daughter, your male servant, or your female servant, or your livestock, or the sojourner who is within your gates. For in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them, and rested on the seventh day. Therefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy (Exodus 20:8-11).
THE BIBLICAL WORLDVIEW OF WORK
Six days you shall labor
A. In the beginning there was work. The Bible begins to talk about work as soon as it begins to talk about anything. The Bible refers to God’s actions to create the universe as work. In fact, he depicts the magnificent project of cosmos invention with language that refers to the regular workweek. Genesis repeatedly shows God “at work” using the Hebrew word, mlkh, the word for ordinary human work. Tim Keller observes, In the beginning, then, God worked. Work was not a necessary evil that came into the picture later, or something human beings were created to do but that was beneath the great God himself. No, God worked for the sheer joy of it. Work could not have a more exalted inauguration (Every Good Endeavor).
B. Our calling to work, is fundamental to bearing God’s image. The opening chapters of Genesis leave us with a striking truth—work was part of paradise. It is part of God’s perfect design for human life, because we are made in God’s image and part of HIS glory and happiness is that HE WORKS. “My Father is always at his work to this very day,” said Jesus, and I too am working.” (John 5:17). The fact that God put work in paradise reminds us that it was not a result of the fall, as is often thought. Work was part of the blessedness of the garden BEFORE the fall. Work is as much a basic human need as food, beauty, rest, friendship, prayer, and sex… Without meaningful work we sense significant inner loss and emptiness. People who are cut off from work because of physical or other reasons quickly discover how much they need work to thrive emotionally, physically, and spiritually (Ibid).
C. The job description of our work is to fill the earth and subdue it and exercise dominion over it. The word, “subdue” indicates that, though all God made was good, it was still to a great degree undeveloped. Al Wolters writes:
The earth had been completely unformed and empty; then in the six-day process of development God had formed it and filled it—but not completely. People must now carry on the work of development: by being fruitful they fill it even more; by subduing it they must form it even more…as God’s representatives, (we) carry on where God left off. But this is now to be a human development of the earth. The human race will FILL the earth WITH its own kind, and it will FORM the earth FOR its own kind. (Creation Regained).
D. The material world matters. Developing the potential of creation is our primary calling because God’s creation matters greatly to him. In fact, the story of salvation is the story of CREATION. Dutch theologian, Herman Bavinck, argues, “The essence of the Christian religion consists in the reality that the CREATION of the Father, ruined by sin, is restored in the death of the Son of God and RECREATED by the grace of the Holy Spirit into a kingdom of God.” For Christians, all work has dignity, no matter how menial, because it reflects God’s image in us, but also because the material universe we are called to care for matters to God. The biblical doctrine of creation harmonizes with the doctrine of the incarnation in which God takes on himself a physical body. It harmonizes with the Biblical view of marriage, which commands the joining of bodies in sex to accompany the joining of hearts in marriage. It harmonizes with the calling of the Messiah in Isaiah 61 to both proclaim the Word and restore physical flourishing. It harmonizes with resurrection doctrine, in which God redeems not just the soul but the body. It harmonizes with Romans 8:21 where we are told that creation itself will be set free from its bondage to corruption. God’s purpose for the earth is that it should become his dwelling place; it is not simply made to house his creatures… The concept of the earth as a divine sanctuary, runs throughout the whole Bible, coming to a climax in the future reality that the apostle John sees in his vision of a ‘new heaven and a new earth.’” Revelation 21:4 reads, “Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man. He will dwell with them, and they will be his people, and God himself will be with them as their God. This earth matters to God. He is going to spend eternity dwelling here.
TWO ASPECTS OF THE COMMAND TO REST
The fourth commandment requirement to rest is both a creation ordinance and a moral calling for God’s Covenant People. I believe that these two components are made clear by the two different reasons given to keep the fourth commandment. When Moses repeats the Ten Commandments given in Exodus 20 forty years later, in Deuteronomy 5, his words are almost identical with one major exception: the reasons for keeping the fourth commandment. In Exodus 20, the reason was the CREATION PATTERN. For in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them, and rested on the seventh day. When Moses repeats the fourth commandment in Deuteronomy 5, the reason for keeping the Sabbath was GOD’S SALVATION OF HIS COVENANT PEOPLE. You shall remember that you were a slave in the land of Egypt, and the Lord your God brought you out from there with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm. Therefore the Lord your God commanded you to keep the Sabbath day (vs 15). Let’s examine both aspects.
A. The Sabbath as CREATION ORDINANCE--Resting One Day in Seven. During the French Revolution, an attempt was made to have a ten-day workweek. But the machinery started breaking down. The factory workers concluded there may be a ratio of exertion to rest bult into the physical world. They returned to one-day-in-seven to shut the factory down. Here are some practical thoughts on applying the creation ordinance to rest one day in seven--three aspects of rest.
- REST is NOT DOING the type of work required for your vocation. My father was an electronics engineer, sitting at his desk all week. He renewed by puttering around his cottage. C.S. Lewis, a writer, renewed by tending to his rose garden.
- REST is DOING SOMETHING ELSE YOU ENJOY. As a busy pastor with five kids and caring for a father with Alzheimer’s, I experienced burn out. I later gave careful thought to what fills my emotional tank. I realized it was making love with to wife, playing sports with my kids, getting out into nature, and reading novels. I believe that what renews us emotionally is doing what we enjoy. It is different for each of us.
- REST is BEEING FREE from things YOU HAVE TO DO. I try for 24 hours to get a break from chores I don’t feel like doing. I realize this could be a formula for selfishness. But most of us work five days giving us a sixth for the honey-do list. Being the best ME to go hard six days requires that I take seriously the creation principle of rest. (As a husband of five kids at home I also tried to give my wife a weekly break from caring for the kids.) In our life rhythm, God says we need to build in rest.
B. The Sabbath As a MORAL CALLING for God’s People—Renewal. In the application above the focus was on resting from work. This second part of the application of the fourth commandment focuses on the phrase Remember the Sabbath to keep it HOLY. I believe the Bible teaches us to set apart the Lord’s Day in some way for the Lord, meaning time with him. The whole concept of sabbath—a day for rest, reflection, renewal and recalibration was designed by God to be a great blessing to us. Some Christians have turned it into a legalistic rule about whether you can eat out at a restaurant or watch football games on Sunday afternoons. (Believe me, I know. I was one of them!) But the fourth commandment, as all God’s commandments are, IS GIVEN TO US BY GOD AS A GREAT BLESSING, which is why Jesus said, the Sabbath was made for man not man for the Sabbath (Mark 2:27). In fact, I believe that giving God the firstfruits of our time is very much like giving God the firstfruits of our earning power. Honor the Lord with your wealth and with the firstfruits of all your produce; then your barns will be filled with plenty, and your vats will be bursting with wine (Prov 3:9-10). I believe this principle of money management applies to our management of other resources, like time. Someone has defined time as: a limited resource extended only by giving the first part back to God.
When Genesis 2 says that God rested from his work of creation, resting had to mean more than just taking a break from the exertion of working. God doesn’t get tired! Resting must imply at the very least reflecting upon and delighting in what he had made. Could a rest day be for renewal of our perspective, our spiritual energies, and our love relationship with Jesus? Gordon MacDonald, in his book, Ordering Your Private World, identifies three principles of genuine rest:
1. Looking back: Closing the loop. “When God rested, He looked upon His work, enjoyed its completed appearance, and then reflected upon its meaning. 'And God saw that it was good' (Gen 1:10)… So, you could say that on the seventh day, God closed the loop on His primary creation activity. He closed it by resting and looking back upon it to survey what had been accomplished.” After the first time I spoke at a men’s breakfast with my son who coaches high school football, when we grabbed a coke afterwards—the first thing he wanted to do was evaluate everything we did. I was shocked. But in the world of football and in many other secular fields, the planning of the next event begins with an evaluation of the game film of the past event. Why wouldn’t our review of last week be a natural starting point for meeting weekly with our CO?
2. Present recalibration: Returning to the Eternal Truths. MacDonald continues, “We are daily the objects of a bombardment of messages competing for our loyalties and labors. We are pushed and pulled in a thousand different directions, asked to make decisions and value judgements, to invest our resources and our time. By what standard of truth do we make these decisions?...Thus rest is not only looking back at the meaning of my work and the path I have so recently walked in my life but it is also a finetuning of my inner navigational instruments so that I can make my way through the world for another week” (Ibid).
Might the Lord’s Day be the opportunity to read that Christian book, read a longer passage of Scripture in one sitting, go to the Colson Center's What Would Your Say website to sharpen your skills at promoting the biblical worldview, or pick up a dictionary to do a word study on the Fruit of the Spirit? Our Mormon friend, Stephen Covey, calls this renewal process the sharpening of our saw.
3. Future strategizing. Defining our mission. MacDonald continues, “When we rest in the biblical sense we affirm our intentions to pursue a Christ-centered tomorrow. We ponder where we are headed in the coming week, month, or year. We define our intentions and make our dedications. General George Patton demanded that his men know and be able to articulate exactly what the current mission was. ‘What is your mission?’ he would frequently ask. The definition of the mission was the most important thing a soldier could carry into combat. Based on that knowledge, he could make his decisions and implement the plan. That is exactly what happens when I pursue biblical rest. I take a hard look at my mission” (Ibid).
So, the biblical concept of setting apart time with God to renew our mission focus seems to be at the core of this fourth commandment. But the renewal of our mission focus isn’t all that requires time set apart to renew. Such weekly “set apart time” is also needed to renew our love relationship with Jesus. Remember that the fourth commandment is the last of the first four commandments that comprise the first table of the law, which explain how God wants to be loved. (Commandment 5-10 comprising the second table, how to love man). God engineered humans to only function properly when our loves are ordered properly. We must first satisfy our hearts by enjoying a love-relationship with our Lord or our hearts will crave other pleasures too much. But, as every marriage counselor knows, ALL LOVE RELATIONSHIPS require time apart alone with each other. Just as couples need regular intimate time together to gaze into the face of each other, we need regular intimate time to enjoy the pleasure of being loved unconditionally by our God, and the pleasure of loving him—delighting in him and praising his magnificence. This is what we do corporately in worship, but there is another, more personal renewal that we need. David, for all his faults, was a model of intimacy with God. Here is a glimpse into his personal love-relationship with his CO.
O God, you are my God, and I long for you. My whole being desires you; like a dry, worn-out, and waterless land, my soul is thirsty for you. Let me see you in the sanctuary; let me see how mighty and glorious you are. Your constant love is better than life itself, and so I will praise you. I will give you thanks as long as I live; I will raise my hands to you in prayer. My soul will feast and be satisfied, and I will sing glad songs of praise to you. As I lie in bed, I remember you; all night long I think of you, because you have always been my help. In the shadow of your wings I sing for joy. I cling to you, and your hand keeps me safe (Psalm 63 GNV).
Could it be that in accordance with God’s design, your life and that of all who depend upon you would be enriched, not only by worshipping with the Body of Christ Sunday morning, but by finding an hour Sunday afternoon or evening that YOU set apart for intimate conversation with your king?
For Further Prayerful Thought:
- What most stood out to you in this episode about the fourth commandment?
- How would you respond to someone who said, “Keeping the Sabbath is being legalistic, and the church is not Israel?”
- What components of a biblical view of work seem most important to you?
- It’s been said that the more important your work is, the more important it is to regularly step away from it and renew. How might this principle apply to serving Christ?
