“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;
then 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.”
(Isaiah 58:13-14 ESV)
Question: Is the Sabbath day (the Lord's Day) a delight to you?
After answering that question, ask yourself why?
For many Christians, they would not say that it's a delight because they take a holy rest from all their worldly labors and pleasures. In fact, to do that would make it a lot less delightful for them. The idea to set aside (make holy) one full day out of the week to do nothing but focus on the Lord seems downright silly, and sadly, needless to most Christians. Sure, they can handle an hour or two of church in the morning, but then the rest of the day is free for whatever other activities suit their desires. To keep the TV off for the whole day - wow! - now that would be a preposterous notion for a lot of today's Christians.
A frightening trend in many modern churches is the irreverence and indifference people give to the Lord's Day. It's as if Sunday is an exciting day, not merely because of the Lord, but for mostly other reasons. Just one of those reasons in America is that Sunday is NFL football day, as well as a day for a myriad of other sporting events throughout the year.
Even in my own church, I'm ashamed to admit that because we offer a "casual" atmosphere, people wear their favorite team's jerseys to church. The buzz about the upcoming game laces most conversations, and even the person giving the announcements can't help but throw in some reference to the day's game or last week's game. I sometimes ask myself, "Did these people come to worship God, or worship something else?"
And Christians I talk to at work and outside of church, they too seem to show little reverence for Sundays anymore. When you ask a Christian how their weekend was, rarely do you hear any comments about the Lord's Day and how it was refreshing to their soul to take time out of their week to forsake worldly business and personal recreation or entertainment to worship God publicly and privately. It just isn't there.
Frankly, I'm disappointed by it. Why do so many so-called Christians treat their faith as if it's an add-on to their already busy life? Like Sunday is just another weekend day where they do the "church thing" and then go about their life? Other than maybe praying before eating, their faith rarely appears in casual conversations once they leave the church parking lot. Discussions about doctrine, theology, or what God is doing in their lives or the lives of those they know are for the most part absent.
It didn't used to be like this. Christians from even 150 years ago would be appalled at how modern-day Christians treat Sundays.
I am not proposing we go back to a legalistic system of Sabbath observance that the Jews for so many years were commanded to do, and did so to the extreme that it became a huge burden for many when it was supposed to be a time of refreshing. For that would defeat the very reason Christ came - He is our true Sabbath rest - He delivers us from the weight of sin and guilt under the law.
No, Sabbath-keeping is a matter of spiritual freedom. Romans 14:5 makes it clear concerning the Sabbath or any other day we might consider sacred, that "each one should be fully convinced in his own mind." And Colossians 2:16 tells us not to judge each other with regard to the Sabbath day.
However, in my own experience, when I don't commit a full day to the Lord and instead I fill it with "things I have to get done" or "places I have to go" or "people I have to see", then it's easy for me to neglect my focus on the Lord when He should be my "best thought by day or by night" - the One in whom I should fully delight in. I also find myself getting caught up in the things of this world that are trivial at best. And if you think about it, if Satan had a strategy to deceive as many people as possible, one of his main goals would be to get people to think about anything and everything else EXCEPT for God.
So when I think about things like the NFL, which so many people in my city seem to be consumed by, I tend to view it as just one of many of Satan's strategies to get people to dethrone God and idolize something else. In my view, NFL has come to mean Neglecting a Focus on the Lord. Christians who watch football, even one game a week, spend more time doing that than is required of them to attend a Sunday morning church service.
As shocking as it may be for some who know me, I have personally decided that for me and my family, NFL is out the door - for good. I've already gotten some blank, confused faces when asked about "the game" and I responded with "I don't know, I didn't watch it." From a Christian worldview, in the end sports mean absolutely nothing. Sure, the world idolizes sports and professional players, but I think we as Christians need to guard ourselves from what the world thinks is important, otherwise those things will creep into our lives and before you know it, we look, talk, and act just like the world.
It never hurts to look back at history and see how those before us treated the Sabbath. Two sources that I have drawn much insight from are the Westminster Confession of Faith (1647) and the Baptist Confession of Faith (1689), and they speak of the Sabbath (Lord's Day) in a similar manner:
As it is the law of nature that in general a proportion of time, by God's appointment, should be set apart for the worship of God, so He has given in His Word a positive, moral and perpetual commandment, binding upon all men, in all ages to this effect. He has particularly appointed one day in seven for a Sabbath to be kept holy for Him. From the beginning of the world to the resurrection of Christ this was the last day of the week, and from the resurrection of Christ it was changed to the first day of the week and called the Lord's Day. This is to be continued until the end of the world as the Christian Sabbath, the observation of the last day of the week having been abolished.
The Sabbath is kept holy to the Lord by those who, after the necessary preparation of their hearts and prior arranging of their common affairs, observe all day a holy rest from their own works, words and thoughts about their worldly employment and recreations, and give themselves over to the public and private acts of worship for the whole time, and to carrying out duties of necessity and mercy.Can you imagine what kind of witness we would be to the world and what kind of statement we would make about the God we serve, if every Christian alive held to this kind of reverent view of the Sabbath?
Think about how you treat the Lord's Day - are you fully convinced in your own mind that how you are spending it (the whole day) is honoring to God?
