Sabbath Observations

Sabbath keeping among Reformed people has been a important component of being Reformed. The Puritan Matthew Henry wrote “The stream of all religion runs either deep or shallow, according as the banks of the sabbath are kept up or neglected.”

Introduction of Sabbath into World History was revolutionary.

It is true that the Scriptures give us God resting in Genesis but there is no explicit record of a Sabbath rest being entered into by God’s people prior to their deliverance from Egypt. Any idea of a regular weekly rest finds its roots in Biblical revelation wherever it is found. The origin of the Sabbath is specifically cited as Mosaic by Nehemiah 9:14)

14 “So You made known to them Your holy sabbath,
And laid down for them commandments, statutes and law,
Through Your servant Moses. (See also Ez. 20:10-26)

Remember, Israel was a slave people who would have been tasked to work 24-7 for their masters. Once they are delivered and given victory the strict abiding prohibition to work on the Sabbath would have been a continual reminder, woven into the rhythm of their existence, of the salvation and liberty that was wrought for them by God.

**Sabbath Communicated God’s Providence and God’s Deliverance of Israel From Unending Labor

Unlike all the other peoples of the Earth, Israel alone was dedicated, as a religious principle, to this regular rhythmic rest that proclaimed God’s providence and their liberty from unending labor.

Isaiah 56:2 / Ex. 31:13-17 teaches that the keeping of Sabbath signified loyalty to the Lord and His covenant.

This was so important to their identity and existence that violation of the Sabbath rest was treason to Israel. To violate the Sabbath was to deny God’s providence. Such a violation was punishable by death.

(Numbers 15:32-36, [concerning the Sabbath — Ex. 20:8-11, 23:12, 31:13-17, 34:21, 35:2-3, Dt. 5:12-15, Lev. 19:3, 30, 26:2)

We must keep in mind that the whole thrust of the Sabbath was both to communicate God’s providence and Israel’s deliverance from unremitting slave work. The Sabbath was Liberty. This fact is what makes old objections about how having to keep Sabbath was an infringement upon a people’s liberty. The whole idea is that the Sabbath idea communicated the idea of Liberty. Jesus brought this front and center again when He reminded His listeners that “the Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath.” The Sabbath allowed for works of mercy and necessity.

When Israel failed to keep Sabbath this failure was a part of their failure to forsake the idolatry they had adopted in Egypt (Ez. 20:5-11) and resulted in their return to captivity. By their constant Idolatry and refusal to honor God’s Sabbath they were communicating their continual Spiritual enslavement and so God returned them to a physical captivity to Babylon to match their spiritual captivity.

** Sabbath Communicated God’s Transcendence & Discontinuity W/ Man

Definition Transcendence — 1. Surpassing others; preeminent or supreme.
2. Being above and independent of the material universe.

God, being Transcendent, is separate from and beyond His creation and so He gives His people a day that is separate from the rest of the week.

Thus, true worship involves a separation from the natural processes of living one finds during the rest of the week. The fact that God gives regular rest and worship that is distinct communicates His discontinuity as Creator from man the creature.

To be sure the faith must be applied in daily life but the source of our faith can not be found in daily life. God is Transcendent.

What might we say then?

True religion, true faith in the God of the Bible involves

1.) A Sabbath that communicates a ceasing from our thinking that we are the cause of our own progress by means of the dint of our work or by natural cause and effect processes and requires that we look to God as a person who, in His providence, provides for His people. Now, this is not to say that the Sabbath teaches laziness. It most certainly does not for the resting of one in seven necessitates the working of 6 in seven. But the Sabbath teaches us that God’s providence ultimately accounts for blessing.

Man’s destiny is not a work of man or the result of natural processes or the working out of some kind of historical cause and effect operating in a closed universe History. Man’s destiny is the consequence of God’s ordination and fore-ordination. When we regularly rest, per God’s command, we communicate that we believe in a personal extra-mundane God who cares and saves His people by His work.

2.) From our confidence in God, as communicated in our resting and worshiping we then live the rest of our lives in terms of God’s revelation. God’s providence gives us rest but it also affords for us how we are to live and move and have our being for our daily living.

So, when we deny the idea of a weekly rest it is at the same time a denial of God and of His Providence. When we deny God’s regular weekly rest we are communicating, knowingly or unknowingly, a rejection of God’s transcendence and consequently we take that idea of the transcendence of God and we place in the created order. (We immanentize it.) Transcendence never goes away but is lodged somewhere else. In the times we live in, in the culture in which we live, that which typically gets the Transcendence of God that has been surrendered, in part by our refusal to honor His Transcendence by honoring the Sabbath is the State. The State becomes Transcendent and is given the prerogatives of God. And like the Pharaoh’s of old the State’s ultimate goal is to give no rest.

The Welfare state is merely the segue unto to the slave state

George Orwell’s Animal Farm — Boxer the Horse — “I will work harder.”

Again we say then that the Sabbath is a reminder of God’s sovereignty, of His role as creator, redeemer, sustainer, and judge. We can rest because God rules.

As an aside we should mention that this Lord’s Day resting that compels us to remember that God rules should deliver us from thinking that man in any sense rules or governs the affairs of History. It is true that conspiracies exist dedicated to rule over the affairs of men, whether those conspiracies are local or global. Elite men do have their plans of social engineering the masses. But the keeping of the Sabbath has us preaching to ourselves that we have no need to fear those conspiracies because we belong to the God who sits and heaven and laughs at those who conspire against His Sovereign providential rule. In the end even the conspiracies of men serve the purposes of our Sovereign God. An insightful glimpse into the meaning of the Sabbath can tell us all that.

*** Just as Israel Rested In God’s Victory Over Egypt, So we Rest in Christ’s Victory Over The Kingdom Of Darkness

We must understand that we can rest because the victory has been accomplished. And when we then arise to work the other 6 days we work not to accomplish an uncertain victory but only to manifest the Victory that has already been accomplished for us in Christ.

The Sabbaths of the OT, and the “rest” given in the promised land, were only foreshadowings of the victory and rest to be given in Christ.

Hebrews 4 is the definitive passage regarding Jesus as our Sabbath rest. The writer to the Hebrews exhorts his readers to “enter in” to the Sabbath rest provided by Christ. After three chapters of telling them that Jesus is superior to the angels and that He is our Apostle and High Priest, he pleads with them to not harden their hearts against Him, as their fathers hardened their hearts against Jehovah in the wilderness. Because of their unbelief, God denied that generation access to the holy land, saying, “They shall not enter into My rest” (Hebrews 3:11). In the same way, the writer to the Hebrews begs them—and us—not to make the same mistake by rejecting God’s Sabbath rest in Jesus Christ. “There remains, then, a Sabbath-rest for the people of God; for anyone who enters God’s rest also rests from his own work, just as God did from his. Let us, therefore, make every effort to enter that rest, so that no one will fall by following their example of disobedience” (Hebrews 4:9-11).

When considering Christ as our perfect Sabbath rest it is interesting to consider the word “Liturgy.” Liturgy originally literally meant “public work.” The Christian Liturgy, the Christian public work, is the perfect law keeping, propitiatory death, resurrection and ascension of our Lord Jesus Christ and then man’s faith and obedience in light of that. This is captured in the very Liturgy we practice here on the Sabbath.

So what might we say in terms of Application?

1.) The Sabbath forces us to ask ourselves if we really believe in the God of the Bible.

Doctrines like God’s Transcendence or the importance to embrace the truth of how God as Creator is distinct from the creature sometimes seem rather abstract but when we consider the Sabbath we begin to realize how important these doctrines are. The Sabbath teaches us about the Character of God. It is not primarily about what we can or can not do on this day. It is primarily about the Character of God.

2.) As the Sabbath points to Christ we must ask ourselves if we are resting in Christ for our all. Is our rest and work a manifestation of our gratitude for a full and free delivery or are we insecure in our deliverance and so work in order to put God in our debt? The good news of the Sabbath is that God has delivered us from our guilt ridden inspired works.

3.) Do we see both our work and our rest in terms of God’s victory? Our work, whatever it is, is not primarily about us but about God manifesting His already accomplished Victory through the work and rest He has called us to. The Sabbath reminds us of the set-apartness of the Christian’s life vis-a-vis the pagan.

Caleb’s Baptism — Question 1 (b)

Question 1. What is thy only comfort in life and death?

Answer

That I with body and soul, both in life and death, (a) am not my own, (b) but belong unto my faithful Saviour Jesus Christ; (c) who, with his precious blood, has fully satisfied for all my sins, (d) and delivered me from all the power of the devil; (e) and so preserves me (f) that without the will of my heavenly Father, not a hair can fall from my head; (g) yea, that all things must be subservient to my salvation, (h) and therefore, by his Holy Spirit, He also assures me of eternal life, (i) and makes me sincerely willing and ready, henceforth, to live unto him. (j)

Caleb,

In the previous post we looked at the idea that we gain comfort (Lit. with strength) in the truth that we are not our own, but in the totality of our being and in the full circumference of our life, we belong to Jesus Christ who is the sovereign King over all reality.

In your Baptism, God brands you as one whom He owns. Because we bear that mark of Baptism we can, in times of trials and discouragements, remember our Baptism as a means of bringing back to our consciousness that are owned by Christ. More about Baptism in later posts.

In this post we want to concentrate on how it is we are owned. The catechism will go into this in great depth in later questions and answers. Remember with these first two questions what we have is a introduction. As such we will not go into more depth later.

We are owned, the Catechism teaches (as it is faithful to Scripture) because our faithful Savior bore the penalty that was rightfully mine. Jesus Christ satisfied for my sins.

1.) Satisfaction for human sin was needed in order to quench the just wrath of God against sin and sinners. Without one who stood in our place as a substitute satisfaction for human sin and sinners those who were sinners must themselves satisfy the wrath of God against sin. God required such satisfaction against sin because He promised that the soul that sinneth shall surely die. If God were to not visit satisfaction upon sin God would be found to be a liar.

2.) The satisfaction for sin was in the spilled blood of Christ. His spilled blood was the satisfaction that God required to quench His wrath. Scripture teaches, “without the shedding of blood there is no remission (forgiving) of sin.”

3.) Our sins have been fully satisfied for. This means that there is no longer any sin — past, present, or future, that God will condemn me for in terms of eternal punishment.

Tit.2:14 “Who gave himself for us, that he might redeem us from all iniquity, and purify unto himself a peculiar people, zealous of good works.”

1 Pet.1:18 Forasmuch as ye know that ye were not redeemed with corruptible things, as silver and gold, from your vain conversation received by tradition from your fathers; 1 Pet.1:19 But with the precious blood of Christ, as of a lamb without blemish and without spot:

Now the consequence of this satisfying of God’s wrath is that you are delivered from all the power of the devil. Notice the movement here. He have gone from being under the authority (power) of the devil to being owned by God. Every person you meet Caleb, is either owned by God or is under the power of the devil. For Christians, the devil is a paper tiger. He has no authority over us. We need not fear his braying or his blowhard character.

Heb.2:14 Forasmuch then as the children are partakers of flesh and blood, he also himself likewise took part of the same; that through death he might destroy him that had the power of death, that is, the devil;

1 John 3:8 He that committeth sin is of the devil; for the devil sinneth from the beginning. For this purpose the Son of God was manifested, that he might destroy the works of the devil.

Another consequence is that the Christian is preserved by God.

John 6:39 And this is the Father’s will which hath sent me, that of all which he hath given me I should lose nothing, but should raise it up again at the last day.

John 10:28 And I give unto them eternal life; and they shall never perish, neither shall any man pluck them out of my hand.

We can have strength, in part, because we have security in knowing that God will never leave us nor forsake us. We live and move in terms of a confidence that nothing can separate us from the love of God.

So, In order to simplify as much as possible,

I. ) Where do we find Comfort (Strength)?

A.) In the fact that we are not our own
B.) In the fact that we are owned by God in our complete totality

II.) How is it that we are owned by God?

A.) Because Jesus Christ spilled His blood
B.) Such a substitutionary death satisfies the Father’s just wrath against sin

III.) What are the consequences of being owned by God?

A.) The Devil has no hold upon me
B.) I am preserved to the very end by God who loves me and call me the apple of His eye.

We will pick up more of the consequences of being owned by God in the next post.

Around the Web

I. Theater

A quite good video series based on Henry Hazlitt’s “Economics in One Lesson.” If you can’t or won’t read the book give these videos a spin.

http://www.cosmolearning.com/courses/economics-in-one-lesson/video-lectures/

II.) Library

Was the 14th amendment Constitutionally passed?

http://www.constitution.org/14ll/no14th.htm

Was the 17th amendment Constitutionally passed?

http://www.thelawthatneverwas.com/seventeenth.aspx

The Wizard Of Oz a allegory?

http://www.usagold.com/gildedopinion/oz.html

A exemplary piece of writing on what the Zimmerman trial will be all about,

http://www.canadafreepress.com/index.php/article/46011

A piece that supports the conclusions of the above piece,

How Not To Draft A Probable Cause Affidavit

III.) Audio

http://chalcedon.edu/research/audio/a-theology-of-resistance-and-victory/

Caleb’s Baptism — Question #1

Question 1. What is thy only comfort in life and death?

The first two questions in the Heidelberg Catechism which we are looking at serve as a kind of Introduction to the Catechism as a whole.

Note in the first question the practicality of the Catechism. The very first question is interested in the person studying the Catechism knowing that the material they are about to study and digest has the purpose of giving them “comfort.” Now the idea of comfort when the Catechism was written was not what we associate with comfort today. It was not the notion of stretching out on a sofa relaxing. The word “Comfort,” comes from the Latin. Con is Latin for “with”; fortis for “strength.” When the Catechism asks “What is your only comfort in life and death,” it is asking where is it that you can find strength.

The answer to that question is of incredible importance. Every person living wants to know where they can find strength when hardships come their way, when persecutions come their way, when courage is needed, when disappointments visit them, when life happens, when death looms. When these realities visit our lives where are we to find comfort (with strength)?

The answer that they give is that,

That I with body and soul, both in life and death, (a) am not my own, (b) but belong unto my faithful Saviour Jesus Christ; (c) who, with his precious blood, has fully satisfied for all my sins, (d) and delivered me from all the power of the devil; (e) and so preserves me (f) that without the will of my heavenly Father, not a hair can fall from my head; (g) yea, that all things must be subservient to my salvation, (h) and therefore, by his Holy Spirit, He also assures me of eternal life, (i) and makes me sincerely willing and ready, henceforth, to live unto him. (j)

We will take a few entries to break their answer down.

That I with body and soul, both in life and death, (a) am not my own, (b) but belong unto my faithful Saviour Jesus Christ…

The reason that we can gain strength in not being our own is found in the reality that in being owned by another, (Jesus Christ) ultimately He who I am owned by has taken responsibility for me. Now, the one who owns me, and who has taken responsibility for me is the Sovereign King of the Whole universe of whom it is said (Ephesians 1:20f) that, He is seated at the right hand of God and He towers over all rule, authority, power, dominion and every opposition that can be imagined. The Sovereign King, who holds all things in subjection is the one who I am owned by and who has taken responsibility for me as my owner.

Can you understand why that truth believed would give someone strength?

Finally, for this post, notice the totality of ownership that the Lord Christ has claimed over His people. In your whole existence (body and soul, life and death) you are owned by the Lord Christ. This means that there is no area where Christ does not have a claim on you, and as such there is no area where we can not find strength in the fact that we are owned by Christ.

The Scriptures that support the idea that we are owned by Christ are below.

(a) Rom.14:7 For none of us liveth to himself, and no man dieth to himself. Rom.14:8 For whether we live, we live unto the Lord; and whether we die, we die unto the Lord: whether we live therefore, or die, we are the Lord’s.

(b) 1 Cor.6:19 What? know ye not that your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost which is in you, which ye have of God, and ye are not your own?

A Small Apologetic For Iron Ink

“Bad Theology Hurts People.”

J. I. Packer

The greatest ill that someone can embrace is bad theology because such wrong thinking works itself out in a persons life in an assortment of unhealthy ways. Were I given my heart’s desire the one thing I would ask for is for people to think rightly about God. The fulfillment of such a request would glorify God, it would be health and life to those whose thinking about God is tarnished and unseemly, and it would be the opening act of the promised post-millennial Kingdom that would discover regenerated and epistemologically self-conscious thinkers ever increasingly going further in and farther up in thinking God’s thoughts after Him.

Now, some might contend that such a vision is extremely impracticable since I’m concerned only with matters of theology and doctrine but before such a thing is thought allow me to defend my heart’s desire for the flowering of right thinking about God among 6 billion people by noting that “as a man thinketh in his heart, so he is.” My desire for men to think rightly about God would release a torrent of right living since orthopraxy is always the inevitable consequence of orthodoxy. A man’s actions always follows his thinking.

When we raised our children, and they misbehaved I was seldom concerned about the action in comparison to my concern for the reason or the thinking that motivated the misbehavior. The necessity for a change of behavior from my children would take care of itself if only a change of thinking was embraced and a change of thinking would be embraced only if we got to the nub of how their misbehavior was a reflection of how they were thinking wrongly concerning God and His Word. Since, “As my children thought in their heart so they were,” my remedial work with them, when misbehavior arose, had to concentrate on their theology and doctrine.

Our Theology, as that is poured over who God made us in our varied human-ness, is everything. It is reflected in the fashions we embrace, the hobbies we take up, and the way we worship. Our Theology / doctrine accounts for our architecture, our cultural institutions and our social order. Our Theology / doctrine explains the way we structure family, the way we understand history, the way we educate. The Medievalists were correct when they insisted that, “Theology is the Queen of the Sciences.” The German General Von Moltke once mistakenly said, “war is simply the expression of politics by other means.” What General Von Moltke should have said is that war is simply the expression of theology by other means since politics is simply the expression of theology by other means.

Many are the Christians who say they desire Reformation. If Reformation is to be successfully pursued then the only means of doing it is by theological warfare. Neither individuals, nor cultures will be Evangelized and Reformed until their theology / doctrine is challenged. Evangelism in pursuit of Reformation, is merely theological / doctrinal warfare. Evangelism, or discipleship that doesn’t thoroughly challenge the ascendant theological paradigm of the person being evangelized or discipled is neither Evangelism or discipleship.

The implication of this, in a culture that is post-Christian, means that there are going to be flash-points of conflict between peoples who own differing theologies. It even means that there will be flash-points of conflict between professed Christian peoples who own differing theologies. This was exemplified by the fact that Luther and Zwingli couldn’t hash out there theological differences when it was in both their best interests to do so. They were both Christians but they each owned differing theologies.

So, Reformation can not be had apart from flash points of conflict between competing theological and doctrinal paradigms. When those flash points of conflict arise between people of different or varying faiths it is not because they are “hateful, mean, arrogant, know-it-alls,” who just want to be right. Rather, it might be because they are “loving, compassionate, meek, beggars” who know and understand that bad theology hurts people and so desire people, who are being hurt by their bad theology, to know Reformation.

When I critique bad theology, on Iron Ink, or in the teaching lectern, or in the pulpit, it is not because I think I am perfect or superior, or that because I think my theology is perfect, though I do think it is correct. If I didn’t think it was correct I wouldn’t hold it. When I critique bad theology it is not because I am a bully who just wants to show off how smart I am. When I critique bad theology I am doing Evangelism and / or discipleship. As a minister that is what I am called to do. When I critique bad theology, wherever or whoever that theology comes from, regardless of their clerical standing, I am merely desiring to rid people of the bad theology which is hurting them. To leave bad theology to gain root without critiquing it and trying to stamp it out would be the very definition of a lack of compassion.

It is often the case that the closer that one begins to approach the center of someone’s bad theology the louder they will scream and the more they will start hissing and insisting that the someone is not being nice. People don’t appreciate their worldview furniture being broken up and cast aside. However, it is often precisely at that moment that the cause has to be pursued out of love for the person doing the hissing and howling.

When I was a boy I was afflicted with a childhood disease that required the sores covering my body to be scrubbed till they bled and then treated with a medicinal ointment. Such treatment was always a family affair in my home. My siblings would hold my shoulders down. My father would hold my legs down and my Mother would scrub the sores as required and then place the ointment on my wounds. As a child I did not believe that they were treating me very lovingly. It would have been easy to accuse them of being cruel, mean, arrogant, know-it-alls. Of course, in retrospect, that wasn’t what was happening at all. The thing that I remember the clearest is that my Mother was always weeping while she scrubbed my wounds and applied the ointment.

People often see me scrubbing theological wounds on the internet. What they often miss is that I am doing so out of love and compassion for those who are wounded by the bad theology they have owned. What they can’t see, because they are sitting at some monitor reading my words, are the tears I am weeping for the person I am trying to scrub clean. What they can’t see is the weight of the burden I carry for the souls of those who have embraced bad theology. For me, what goes on at Iron Ink is not a warfare over “who is right,” but a contest for “what is right.” If I am in error being shown that error is the best thing that could ever happen to me.

I remain a sinner saved by grace alone. I have yet to scrub clean all the bad theology out of my own life. However, my sanctification will only go forward as I think God’s thoughts after him, and the best way I know to do evangelism is by continuing to critique the bad theology that people have embraced that hurts them so badly.

The love of God compels me.