The Practice of the Sabbath Day
How are we to keep the Lord’s Day as the Christian Sabbath holy to the Lord? Paragraph 8 lays out two key ways:
1.) Due preparation: “The sabbath is then kept holy unto the Lord, when men, after a due preparing of their hearts, and ordering their common affairs aforehand,”
Keeping the Sabbath holy to the Lord starts before the Sabbath begins. We shouldn’t stumble or sleepwalk into the Sabbath! We shouldn’t wake up and be surprised that it is Sunday! Instead, our hearts and our homes should be well-prepared for that great day. We should be prepared before we go to bed Saturday night, but this preparation should initially begin Monday morning!
In a sense, we should for the Lord’s Day like athletes prepare for game day. Think of the life of a college football player. The big day for him is Saturday. Everything he does after the game and throughout the week prepares him for next Saturday.
- Sunday: rest, light stretching and exercises, film from previous game
- Monday: weightlifting, film
- Tuesday: practice, weightlifting, film
- Wednesday: practice, film
- Thursday: practice, weightlifting, film
- Friday: walk through, meetings, check equipment, lay uniform out, go over game plan, get plenty of water and sleep
- Saturday morning: breakfast with team, warm ups, motivational speeches and videos, meditation, game time!
- REPEAT ALL OVER AGAIN!
The point is, he lives his life Saturday to Saturday, game day to game day.
In a similar way, Christians must schedule their entire week around the Lord’s Day. But instead of living Saturday to Saturday like the college football player or Monday to Monday like the American worker, as a Christian live your life Sabbath Day to Sabbath Day.
Since the Lord’s Day is the greatest day of the week and the corporate worship of God is the greatest event on earth, then everything else we do throughout the week should be done in preparation of it! Plan to do your vocation, commerce, grocery shopping, home projects, yardwork, schoolwork, hobbies and recreations, and family celebrations on other days so there will be no distractions or hindrances to observing the Christian Sabbath and keeping it holy to the Lord.
Westminster Larger Catechism states this: “we are to prepare our hearts, and with such foresight, diligence, and moderation, to dispose and seasonably dispatch our worldly business, that we may be the more free and fit for the duties of that day.”
I want to encourage you that with some thoughtfulness and intentionality, you can get all your work done in six days without having it bleed into the Lord’s Day.
Other Applications:
- Go to sleep on time on Saturday night.
- Wake up early on Sunday morning.
- Eat a filling, nutritious breakfast.
- Spend time reading the Scriptures, meditating, and praying before leaving the house.
- Think upon the works of God, the resurrection of Jesus Christ, the special presence of God in corporate worship, and the eternal Sabbath rest to come in the New Heavens and New Earth.
- Repent of any known sin and be reconciled to others who have something against you.
- Sing hymns with your family as you drive to church.
- Put down social media (or at least greatly limit it to spiritual matters).
2.) Right practice:
What should our Sabbath Day observance look like? How do we properly keep it? Negatively, we are not to profane it (Exodus 31:14; Nehemiah 13:17), meaning we are not to treat it as a common day, like the other days of the week. Positively, we are to keep it holy (Exodus 20:8; Deuteronomy 5:12), meaning we are to set it apart from the other days of the week as a special and sacred day.
This involves resting. “Sabbath” literally means “rest”. But we are not to rest from all work and be completely inactive. God is our great example in Sabbath keeping. On the seventh day, He rested. But He was not inactive. His rest meant He finished the initial work of creation. It also meant He delighted in all the works of His hands and He sat enthroned as King over creation. But He did not put Himself on “sleep mode”. Even on the seventh day, God as the Providential Governor was upholding and sustaining the universe by the Word of His power.
Jesus affirms this. On the Sabbath Day Jesus said, “My Father is working until now, and I am working” (John 5:17). Since the Father and the Son were busy at work on the Sabbath Day, so should we. But we must put down a certain kind of work in order to take up another. So, paragraph 8 goes on to tell us what exactly we are to rest from and what exactly we are to be doing in order to fulfill the requirements of the 4th commandment.
i.) What we are to put down: “do not only observe an holy rest all day, from their own works, words and thoughts, about their worldly employment and recreations,”
The holy rest we are to observe on the Christian Sabbath entails resting from our worldly employment and recreations. Resting from thinking about them, speaking about them, and doing them.
What are worldly employment and recreations? “Worldly” here doesn’t mean sinful. We are always to abstain from sinful things, not just on Sundays! It means things that pertain to this world or this present age. It includes lawful things having to do with our employments/jobs and recreations/hobbies. In other words, secular work and play.
God gives us six whole days to do these things. But on the Sabbath Day, all “needless”[1] works, words, and thoughts about them must be put down.
Here are several passages which teach us to rest from our worldly employment:
- Exodus 20:10: 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.
- Deuteronomy 5:14: 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 or your male servant or your female servant, or your ox or your donkey or any of your livestock, or the sojourner who is within your gates, that your male servant and your female servant may rest as well as you.
- Leviticus 23:3: “Six days shall work be done, but on the seventh day is a Sabbath of solemn rest, a holy convocation. You shall do no work. It is a Sabbath to the LORD in all your dwelling places.
- Jeremiah 17:24: “‘But if you listen to Me, declares the LORD, and bring in no burden by the gates of this city on the Sabbath day, but keep the Sabbath day holy and do no work on it,
- Nehemiah 13:15-22 (here Nehemiah rebukes the Israelites for buying and selling food and wares on the Sabbath Day and makes the needed reforms to keep it from happening again.)
What about worldly recreations? The classic passage which touches on this is Isaiah 58:13-14: 13“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; 14then 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.”
Here we are told not to go our own ways and not to seek our own pleasure and not to speak our own words on the holy day of the LORD. In essence, this means to refrain from doing what we want to do and what pleases us. In fact, the LXX literally reads “not to do your will in the holy day”. This is a broad and far-reaching injunction that refers to both work and play. The point is, on the Lord’s Day we are to turn back our feet from doing even permissible things that give us delight and pleasure and only do what God tells us to do.
This means our Christian liberty is more restricted on the Lord’s Day than other days of the week. This is not only true during corporate worship but also throughout the whole day. D. Scott Meadows comments, “The point is that the Sabbath does not offer us the liberties we have on the other six days to do what we please in terms of innocent things like business or recreation; rather, the Lord claims His right to set the agenda for our Lord’s Day activities, as it is His holy day, and not an ordinary day like the others.” [2]
The Lord sets the agenda for His day. Since the day belongs to Him and since we belong to Him, He tells us what to think about, what to speak about, and what to do. As the Westminster Larger Catechism says, on this day God “restrains our natural liberty in things at other times lawful”.[3]
ii.) What we are to take up: “but are also taken up the whole time in the public and private exercises of his worship, and in the duties of necessity and mercy.”
Instead of a specific list of dos and don’ts, the Confession gives us three categories or kinds of duties or works that must fill up our time on the Sabbath Day: works of piety, works of necessity, and works of mercy.
We see these three kinds of works perfectly displayed in the example of our Savior Jesus Christ. As the Keeper and Lord of the Sabbath (Matthew 12:8), what He did in the days of His flesh on the Sabbath Day carries divine authority and sets a good example for us to follow. Edmund Clowney says, “Jesus authoritatively defines what may and what may not be done on the Sabbath. Jesus defines Sabbath service”.[4]
A. ) Works of piety: “public and private exercises of his worship,”
- Luke 4:16: And He came to Nazareth, where He had been brought up. And as was His custom, He went to the synagogue on the Sabbath day, and He stood up to read.
- Matthew 12:5: Or have you not read in the Law how on the Sabbath the priests in the temple profane the Sabbath and are guiltless?
Works of piety are works pertaining to the worship of God and the edification of our souls or the souls of others. These are the main and primary works we are to do on the Lord’s Day. Examples include private Bible reading, prayer, family worship, corporate worship, fellowship with the brethren, evangelizing, and Christian-themed activities.
It is important to state that the observance of the Christian Sabbath is much more than resting from worldly labors; it also entails taking up the sacred duties of worship. We rest from ordinary work precisely so we can worship our God.
We see this combination of putting down ordinary work and taking up sacred work in the OT observance of the Sabbath Day. Two passages make this clear: Leviticus 23 and Psalm 92.
Leviticus 23:
Leviticus 23:3: “Six days shall work be done, but on the seventh day is a Sabbath of solemn rest, a holy convocation. You shall do no work. It is a Sabbath to the LORD in all your dwelling places.”
The Hebrew phrase “holy convocation/assembly” is used 15 times in the OT (Exodus 12:6; Leviticus 23:3, 7, 8, 21, 24, 27, 35, 36; Numbers 28:18, 25, 26; 29:1, 7, 12). On the Sabbath Day, the Israelites were to convoke or assemble together. They were to do so for a holy or special purpose.
So, the solemn rest is rest from ordinary work, not all work. On the Sabbath, the Israelites were to lay down their normal activities in order to convoke together for the special purpose of worshiping God. One thing they were to do was give offerings to the LORD in worship (which is evident in many of the other places this term is used).
Psalm 92:
Psalm 92 is entitled, “A Psalm. A Song for the Sabbath.” John Gill states, “It was made for the sabbath day, and to be used upon it;”.
This song tells us that on the Sabbath, these things would go on:
- Praising God for His works of creation and salvation (vv. 1, 4).
- Proclaiming the attributes of God in the morning and evening (vv. 2, 15).
- Playing music to God (v. 3).
- Participating in the worship of God in the house and courts of God (vv. 7-15).
Geneva Study Bible on Psalm 92 says, “Which teaches that the use of the Sabbath stands in praising God, and not only in ceasing from work.”
Calvin remarks, “There is no reason to doubt that the Jews were in the habit of singing this psalm, as the inscription bears, upon the Sabbath-day, and it is apparent, from different passages, that other psalms were applied to this use. . . . The reason why the Psalmist appropriated this psalm to the Sabbath is sufficiently obvious. That day is not to be holy, in the sense of being devoted to idleness, as if this could be an acceptable worship to God, but in the sense of our separating ourselves from all other occupations, to engage in meditating upon the Divine works. As our minds are inconstant, we are apt, when exposed to various distractions, to wander from God. We need to be disentangled from all cares if we would seriously apply ourselves to the praises of God. The Psalmist then would teach us that the right observance of the Sabbath does not consist in idleness, as some absurdly imagine, but in the celebration of the Divine name.”
And of course, the example of Christ makes this clear. On the Sabbath Day, Jesus did not stay home and sleep all day. Instead, it was His custom and habit on the Sabbath Day to worship God in the synagogue!
B.) Works of necessity: “and in the duties of necessity”
- Matthew 12:1: At that time Jesus went through the grainfields on the Sabbath. His disciples were hungry, and they began to pluck heads of grain and to eat.
- Luke 14:1: One Sabbath, when He went to dine [literally, to eat bread] at the house of a ruler of the Pharisees, they were watching Him carefully.
Works of necessity are works pertaining to the performance of duties that must be done every day or done on the Lord’s Day.[5] Matthew Poole says they are works that are “either for the upholding of our lives, or fitting us for sabbath services”.[6]
Examples include getting dressed, taking a shower, eating food, driving to and from church, sleeping, and working occupations that are essential to the fabric and wellbeing of our society (soldiers, police officers, nurses, power plant supervisors, some forms of public transportation, etc.).
Here is a good rule of thumb: if the work can be done on other days of the week, it is probably not a work of necessity. If it can wait, let it wait!
C.) Works of mercy: “and mercy.”
- Matthew 12:7-8: 7And if you had known what this means, ‘I desire mercy, and not sacrifice,’ you would not have condemned the guiltless. 8For the Son of Man is lord of the Sabbath.”
- Matthew 12:9-14: 9He went on from there and entered their synagogue. 10And a man was there with a withered hand. And they asked Him, “Is it lawful to heal on the Sabbath?”—so that they might accuse Him. 11He said to them, “Which one of you who has a sheep, if it falls into a pit on the Sabbath, will not take hold of it and lift it out? 12Of how much more value is a man than a sheep! So it is lawful to do good on the Sabbath.” 13Then He said to the man, “Stretch out your hand.” And the man stretched it out, and it was restored, healthy like the other. 14But the Pharisees went out and conspired against Him, how to destroy Him.
- John 7:23: If on the Sabbath a man receives circumcision, so that the law of Moses may not be broken, are you angry with Me because on the Sabbath I made a man’s whole body well?
Works of mercy are works pertaining to helping others with pressing needs. This is what mercy means in the Bible. It is doing good to those who are suffering and are in need of great assistance. In the context of helping the hurting, Jesus said that it is lawful “to do good” (Matthew 12:12), “to heal” (Matthew 12:10), and “to save life” (Mark 3:4) on the Sabbath. Examples include feeding the poor, healing the sick, visiting the imprisoned, sheltering the homeless, educating the ignorant, showing hospitality to strangers, burying the dead, defending the weak and oppressed, and caring for your children and animals.
Conclusion
Not everything good to do is good to do on the Lord’s Day. The three categories of acceptable works to be done on the Christian Sabbath are works of piety, works of necessity, and works of mercy. When looking at the life of Christ, His Sabbath-keeping looked like this: He preached (piety), He ate (necessity), and He healed (mercy).
Think about what your life looks like on a typical Lord’s Day. Can you rightly place what you think about, what you say, and what you do in one (or more) of these three categories? Are your works pious? Necessary? Merciful?
If so, keep on doing them and excel still more! Even the greatest saint needs to grow in keeping the Christian Sabbath holy.
If not, repent and stop doing your own pleasure on God’s holy day! Make the necessary adjustments and changes to your Sunday routine that will enable you to perform the right kinds of works on the Lord’s Day.
[1] Taken from the Westminster Larger Catechism Q&A 119 on the sins which are forbidden in the fourth commandment.
[2] Personal correspondence with D. Scott Meadows.
[3] Westminster Larger Catechism, Q&A 121.
[4] Edmund Clowney, How Jesus Transforms the Ten Commandments, 58.
[5] See Sam Waldron, Lectures on the Lord’s Day, 140.
[6] Matthew Poole, comments on Matthew 12:4.
