The Sabbath Day is the feast-day of the soul. It is the day of “rest and gladness” that ought to be the highlight of every believer’s week. Yet sadly, we frequently find ourselves apathetic towards the Lord’s Day, even viewing it as a day which is burdensome and unexciting.

Too often we fall into the trap of the Pharisees. They made the Sabbath into a miserable day of restrictions and robbed the people of all freedom and joy with their manmade stipulations.

But what did our Saviour have to say about the Pharisees’ treatment of God’s sanctified day? Did he endorse their superficial legalism and praise them for their apparent “holiness” and “austerity”?

Absolutely not! Jesus clearly condemned their view of the Sabbath and re-established it as a day of feasting, blessing, and life.

This is what we see in Mark 2:23-3:6. When the Pharisees complained because the disciples were plucking heads of grain on the Sabbath, Jesus rebuked them and said that “the Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath” (2:27). His point is clear: God created the Sabbath for the enrichment and enjoyment of mankind, not for their servitude. That is why it is a day of feasting, not fasting!

Furthermore, in healing the man with a withered hand despite the indignation of the religious leaders (3:1-6), Jesus – the Lord of the Sabbath – declared his day to be one of salvation, restoration, and life.

The Sabbath Principle

From the very beginning, God established that one day in seven would be set apart as a day of rest. The Sabbath entered into existence long before it was given to Moses on Mount Sinai (Exod. 20:8-11). As we read in the creation account in Genesis 2:2-3:

“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.”

God needed no physical rest after creation. He is the all-powerful, all-sufficient, impassible God! Rather, the rest in view here is a rest of consummation. God is setting a pattern in creation: “Six days you shall labour, and do all your work, but the seventh is a Sabbath to the LORD your God… For in six days the LORD made heaven and earth, the sea and all that is in them, and rested on the seventh day” (Exod. 20:9-11).  

Just as in the beginning the seventh day was a sign that God had completed his work of creation, so the Lord’s Day today is a celebration of God’s completed work of redemption. That is why the Christian Sabbath is a Sunday, not a Saturday. When Christ rose again on the first day of the week (Matt. 28:1-10), his work of re-creation was perfected, a second humanity born, and a new world order established.

With the resurrection, God set a new pattern in creation. Now, Sunday is the day on which he commands us to rest and receive his blessing. That is why Jesus appeared to his disciples on the “first day of the week” (John 20:19); the first Christians gathered to break bread “on the first day of the week” (Acts 20:7); and John was in the Spirit “on the Lord’s day”, i.e., the first day of the week (Rev. 1:10).[i]

Sabbath Rest

At the heart of the Sabbath law was the principle of rest – not the rest of inactivity and laziness, but rest from the sweat and toil of daily labour in order to enjoy being in the presence of God.

This is what we see in Exodus 16. God had rescued the people of Israel from slavery in Egypt and had promised to bring them to the land of Canaan. However, as the Israelites journeyed in the wilderness, they grumbled because of their perceived lack of food.[ii] God, in his mercy, provided for them by raining manna down from heaven.

Yet he also provided for them in another, abundant way. He gave them a day on which they could enjoy his provision without having to work. God commanded the people to gather a double portion on the sixth day (v.5) and on that day Moses declared: “Tomorrow is a day of solemn rest, a holy Sabbath to the LORD; bake what you will bake and boil what you will boil, and all that is left over lay aside to be kept until morning” (v.23).

On every other day of the week, the Israelites were required to work to collect their daily manna. If they tried to store extra for the following day, it would become rotten and worm-ridden (v.20). Yet, on the Sabbath day, the portion which the people had collected the day before “did not stink, and there were no worms in it” (v.24). God overturned the normal principle of decay so that the people could enjoy Sabbath rest.

The reason there was no manna collection on the Sabbath was not because God wanted the people to fast, but because he wanted them to feast without having to work! The day existed for this very purpose: that they might rest and receive both physical and spiritual nourishment from God.

Yet, in their madness and sin, the Israelites wanted to enslave themselves to work rather than receive God’s gift of rest (v.27-30). In their hearts, they preferred the seven days of bondage and forced labour in Egypt to God’s Sabbath. Ultimately, their disobedience and inability to enjoy God’s rest on earth would mean that they never entered the promised land or the eternal rest of heaven (Ps. 95:11). 

Many people in our culture insist on remaining enslaved to the cruel taskmasters of this age. Sunday is no longer viewed as a special day of rest. Instead, it has become a day of work just like all the other days of the week. Unsurprisingly, rejecting God’s gift of one-day-in-seven to put aside our labour has not led to more relaxation and refreshment. It has only led to more anxiety, tiredness, restlessness, and dissatisfaction.

The reality is that Sabbath rest is a gift from God. We only deprive ourselves of his blessing if we reject it! Every Lord’s Day is a fresh opportunity for us to feast on God’s sweet, heavenly manna for free.

There are many practical ways we can prepare for the Lord’s Day on Saturday, to enable us to rest and enjoy God. But fundamentally, resting in God on the Sabbath is an act of faith. God calls us to trust in him to provide for our every physical and spiritual need, and he promises to bless us when we submit to him in keeping his Sabbath Day holy (Isa. 59:13-14).

Sabbath Communion

Sabbath rest from work is a common good that can be enjoyed by all people. But for the children of God, this physical rest serves a far greater purpose: it enables communion with God.

As Christians, we set aside our ordinary activities on the Lord’s Day in order to worship and enjoy our Triune God.[iii] It is not a day of inactivity, but of special, spiritual activity. As The Second London Confession of Faith 22.8 outlines:

“The sabbath is then kept holy unto the Lord, when men, after a due preparing of their hearts, and ordering their common affairs aforehand, do not only observe an holy rest all day, from their own works, words and thoughts, about their worldly employment and recreations, 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.” (emphasis added)

We forsake our worldly business and pleasure in order to delight in God. It is our desire to dedicate the whole day to communion with God, as we hear his word preached, sing his praise, come before him in prayer, feast at his table, and fellowship with his people. As Hodge, a 19^th Century American Presbyterian theologian, summarized in his commentary on the Westminster Confession:

“We should consecrate the whole day, without curtailment or alienation, to the purpose designed—that is, rest from worldly labour, the worship of God and the religious instruction of our fellowman.”[iv]

The Lord’s Day is a foretaste of heaven for the believer. As we rest from our earthly labour and commune with God in Christ by his Spirit, we look forward to the day when we will no longer have to toil but will be wholly devoted to the worship and enjoyment of God.

For the true Christian, Sabbath rest is not a burden. It is our greatest delight as we await Christ’s return and our eternal rest with him.

“O day of rest and gladness,

O day of joy and light,

O balm of care and sadness,

Most beautiful, most bright!

On thee the high and lowly,

Through ages joined in tune,

Sing: Holy, holy, holy,

To the great God triune.”[v]

ENDNOTES:

[i] The testimony of the early church fathers confirms that Christians in the 1^st-2^nd Centuries AD gathered to worship on Sunday. e.g., Justin Martyr, Apology 1.67, states:

“But Sunday is the day on which we all hold our common assembly, because it is the first day on which God, having wrought a change in the darkness and matter, made the world; and Jesus Christ our Saviour on the same day rose from the dead” (trans. Marcus Dods and George Reith, CHURCH FATHERS: The First Apology (St. Justin Martyr)).

[ii] I say ‘perceived’ because the Israelites still had a great number of cattle with them, as Oliver brought out in his sermon on this passage. See Exod. 12:38 and 17:3.

[iii] Which is the chief end of man, as the Westminster Shorter Catechism Q.1 states.

[iv] Quoted in Brandon Rhea, Spurgeon’s Forgotten Sabbatarianism, (Florida: Founders Press, 2023), 178. Available in the Broken Wharfe Shop: click here.

[v] Christopher Wordsworth, “O day of rest and gladness”, Christian Hymns, no.63.