The Lord’s Day: A Gift Older than the Law
In America, we have more ways to rest than any people who have ever lived, and less rest than most of those who have gone before us. The phone glows its blue-light rays on the nightstand at midnight. Sunday afternoon fills up with the work we could not finish on Saturday, or a soccer match with the kids. We are always reachable, behind, maybe a little frayed at the edge, and on top of that there is almost a feeling of guilt that we have not done quite enough. Into a life like that, God speaks a word that sounds almost too good to obey. The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath (Mark 2:27).
It was made for man. Hear it the way the Lord said it. Not a chain laid across the neck, but a gift set into the hand. The Pharisees had turned the day into a silly, if not outright stupid, hedge of rules, and Jesus cut straight through their fence to the thing itself. The day was never meant to master you. It was made for you, the way a table is made for a hungry family.
Go back in Scripture and see where it came from. Before there was a tablet of stone, before there was a single commandment to break, before sin had so much as entered the world, there was this day. And on the seventh day God finished his work that he had done, and he rested … So God blessed the seventh day and made it holy (Genesis 2:2–3). God was not worn out; He does not get tired. He rested to lay down a pattern, the way a father shortens his long stride so a small child can walk beside him. He blessed one day and set it apart, while everything was still good. The Sabbath is not a burden the Law invented to spoil our fun. It is more like a small piece of Eden, handed down to us. And we do not deserve it.
When the commandment came at Sinai, it came not to create the day but to guard it. Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy (Exodus 20:8). Remember, as a man remembers what he is in danger of losing something. And folded into the reasons God gives is a mercy a hurried, self-absorbed world cannot see: a whole day on which the lowliest laborer could not be made to work, when the servant rested as the master rested, when the very animals were let off the yoke and the stranger inside the gates was given the same ease as the household. It is one of the kindest laws ever written. Strike it from a society, as ours has very nearly done, and watch who works the longest hours and rests the least. The day was always a fence around the weak.
We keep it now on the first day of the week, not the seventh, and we keep it gladly. Our confession puts it plainly. From the beginning of the world until the resurrection of Christ, the day was the last of the week; from the resurrection it was changed to the first day, which we call the Lord’s Day, and so it is to continue to the end of the world as the Christian Sabbath. The reason is the empty tomb. The old rest looked back on a finished creation. The new rest looks back on a finished redemption. On the first day of the week our Lord walked out of the grave, and his people have gathered on that day ever since to break bread and to sing. We do not stagger to a rest at the worn-out end of the week. We begin the week with the resurrection. The gift is given first, and then we are sent into the six days carrying it, hopefully. That’s the plan, correct?
And here is the word that turns the whole thing from duty into joy. If you call the Sabbath a delight … then you shall take delight in the Lord (Isaiah 58:13–14). A delight. Not a day to be endured with one eye on the clock, counting down to the hour when ordinary life resumes. God is not asking you to suffer through six-sevenths of your days and then white-knuckle the seventh. He is handing you a day to lift your eyes off of self, your goals, jobs, of your own striving after whatever and rest everything on Him.
What does that look like, set down in a real week, in a real house? It looks at first like ceasing. You stop. The unanswered message stays unanswered. The lawn waits. Maybe you become a couch potato. The striving that drives the other six days is laid down on purpose, as an act of trust that the world will keep turning without putting your hand on it, because it will, and the reminder does the soul good. Then it looks like gathering. The Lord’s Day is not chiefly a day off; it is a day with the people of God, under the preached Word, at the Table, singing the same songs together. At least that is the ideal. But wait a minute. A Sabbath spent alone on the couch is a thinner thing than God means it to be. And it looks like mercy. Our forefathers spoke of works of necessity and mercy, and they were right to: a milk cow still needs milking, the sick still need tending, the lonely neighbor still needs a visit [Do folks do that anymore?]. The point is the day was never meant to make you useless to those around you. It was meant to free you to love them without that blasted clock running.
I believe there are two ways, at least, to lose this gift. One is to treat the day as if it is nothing, to let it dissolve into errands and screens and soccer matches until it is the Lord’s Day in name only, and then to wonder why the soul has gone hungry or indifferent. The other is to rebuild the Pharisees’ silly fence, to load the day with so many stupid – and they were stupid – rules that a child comes to dread its coming. Both miss the heart of it all. The first throws the gift away unopened and ungrateful for it. The second buries it so deeply that no one can find it. Keep the day, but keep it as a delight, a joy, the gift that it is and your children will reach for it when they are grown. That’s my understanding of it.
Listen, the day was always pointing past itself. There remains a Sabbath rest for the people of God, for whoever has entered God’s rest has also rested from his works as God did from his (Hebrews 4:9–10). Every quiet first day is a small rehearsal of a rest that does not end, the rest of those who have stopped trying to save themselves and have leaned their whole weight on the One who finished the work in their place. That is the gift inside the gift. One day in seven, the Lord’s Day, preaches the gospel to you: cease from your labors. It is finished. Come and rest. Is it not obvious?
So when the first day comes around again this week, do not meet it as one more obligation in an already stress-filled, crowded life. Meet it for what it is. A gift older than the law, bought back by an empty tomb, held out to you by the Lord who calls himself its Master. Lay the week down and look forward to Sunday. Gather with the saints. Call it a delight and the gift that it is. And let the God who rested teach your restless heart, again, how to rest.
