How easy it is to subtly manipulate the simple instruction of God! How prone we are to walk according to our own understanding, all the while thinking we are pretty holy!
This is as true of our day as it was in the days Yeshua walked among us. Then, He lashed out at the religious teachers of the day for their twisting and manipulation of the pure truth of the ways of God. The christian church is just as guilty of this as the Jewish religious leaders.
But so are we individually. Each of us faces the battle with self will.
It has been hard to review this respected pastor's response to the question of why we don't worship on the Sabbath. I am perplexed almost beyond words at how what he says can come out of what I read in the Bible.
It's not just a case of differing opinions. What he says just isn't there. How can hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions of dedicated and sincere believers, have gone along with this? Are they wrong? Or am I? Are there two versions of 'right'?
What if I'm totally out in left field, being the only one who isn't seeing what they see? What is going on here? Reading through the almost full page of this intelligent, learned and highly respected pastor's explanation of how the 'church fathers' (an unsavoury bunch on the whole, if you've ever read up on them) have 'proved beyond doubt that the early church worshiped on the Lord's Day' has been disheartening.
Who am I to question him? I have no education, no seminary or theological training. I only read the Bible, study it, ponder its words, pray for understanding and try to walk in the path of the ways of this revelation. Is that enough? I read it literally, then pray for understanding of its patterns, themes and examples.
I have to ask...why is it so important to the church to do away with the Sabbath? How has what was given as a sign of the covenant, and as a gift of rest and time to a nation of former slaves (as we were also, slaves in bondage to sin) become such a foul thing to the christian church?
It isn't as if they have simply transferred the day of rest to Sunday. While this was perhaps truer many years ago (though my father has shared his abhorrence of the 'Sunday thou shalt nots' of his childhood) today on Sunday we meet more christians from our former church at Costco than we do any other day of the week!
Some of what this pastor says is so beautiful. Yet almost in the same sentence, he makes a totally baseless claim. Example: The Lord's Day should never deteriorate into a legalistic, Old Testament, or Jewish Sabbath. Sunday should be experienced as a delight rather than a drudgery freighted with burdensome lists of DOs and DON'Ts. (To be honest, however, I don't see a problem in our culture or churches of keeping the Sabbath too strictly.) Presumably his reference to a 'Jewish Sabbath' means one that includes the man-made burden of additional rules which all but smothers the original beauty of the commandment. He appears to equate such an experience with 'a legalistic, Old Testament' observance. The Sabbath was always intended to be a joy and a delight. He even quotes God's words from Isaiah 58 on this at the end of his response, though apparently meaning the christian 'sabbath' of Sunday instead:
If you keep your feet from breaking the Sabbath, and from doing as you please on my holy day, if you call the Sabbath a delight and the Lord's holy day honourable, and if you honour it by not going your own way and not doing as you please or speaking idle words, then you will find your joy in the Lord, and I will cause you to ride on the heights of the land and to feast on the inheritance of your father Jacob. The mouth of the Lord has spoken.
THIS is an 'Old Testament Sabbath'! How is this legalistic?
How quickly we like to apply all kinds of human rules to how we do things. According to this pastor, we should worship on Sunday because that's just the way its been done for years; the Bible says we should (it doesn't - see Parts 1-3) and so do the church fathers (they actually do, but many of them were very antisemitic and there was motivation for breaking with the Jews).
How about if, on the Biblical Sabbath, we just rest from our labour that provides for ourselves during the week, and allow those who work for us (including bus drivers and shop clerks) to have a break too, whether they take it or not?
How about if we refrain from making too many rules for ourselves and others, and focus instead on the wonderful gift we've been given, and cultivate a genuine desire to please the Giver in how we use this gift?
How about if we refrain from making rules for or passing judgement on how others observe this day, beyond being available to them to together search out the Biblical truth, then letting them make up their own mind?
How about if we don't substitute a day of rest with frantic, intense 'study' or 'worship' or 'good deeds' that exhausts us or frazzles our family?
Sunday is actually a wonderful day to spend in some study, prayer, praise and corporate gathering. It's just not the Sabbath.
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