<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
The week has passed. My work is done. Sun has set; Sabbath is here. I\u2019m so ready.<\/p>\n
Another busy workweek wore me out, as usual. I\u2019ve leaned toward this moment all day. Walking through the front door, I sigh audibly, bodily. The best day of the week arrives in the nick of time, greeting me like an old friend. I smile.<\/p>\n
I can\u2019t explain it, but in that instant, space shifts, time tips, and I let go<\/em>. It\u2019s Sabbath.<\/p>\n So here I am writing these thoughts with my family sleeping, the lights low, and my feet kicked up.<\/p>\n I love the Sabbath. I have for as long as I can remember. I can\u2019t imagine living without it or why anyone would want to try. A well-meaning Christian once told me I didn\u2019t have to keep Sabbath because I wasn\u2019t under the law. My defense wasn\u2019t theologically well formed, although I think it could\u2019ve been. All that came out then was \u201cCan I keep it if I want?\u201d<\/p>\n Now it\u2019s a running joke in my family. Dragging myself home on Friday evening, I\u2019ll often quip with a wink to my wife, while I\u2019m flopping onto the couch, \u201cThank God I\u2019m under the law.\u201d<\/p>\n I just turned 48, and my workweek takes a bigger toll as the years pile up. Yes, I was one of the weird church kids who actually liked Sabbath p.m. naps. I enjoy them now even more, along with what \u201cchurch\u201d can really be and how Sabbath makes that possible.<\/p>\n If real life has taught me anything, it\u2019s that I need Sabbath and that Sabbath is there for me<\/em>. For all of us. It\u2019s not just about the law, important as that is; it\u2019s about delight. Sabbath is the best day of the week simply because it\u2019s the blessed<\/em> day of the week. A delight. Why would anyone want to miss out on that?<\/p>\n <\/p>\n The more I experience Sabbath as a blessing<\/em>, the more I realize how much it\u2019s entangled in Jesus. I learned long ago that I can\u2019t fully know God\u2019s Sabbath by starting at creation and moving toward Christ through the law. Jesus is the first, the last, and the center. Beginning with Him, I discover that whichever way I go, He\u2019s waiting for me there, illuminating the text in wonderful ways.<\/p>\n Mark 2:23-28 illustrates this profoundly. It tells how Jesus\u2019 hungry disciples picked grain to eat while walking through a field on the Sabbath and were accused by the Pharisees of breaking the command. Jesus, more concerned about human need than defining work<\/em>, replies, \u201cThe Sabbath was made for man, and not man for the Sabbath. Therefore the Son of Man is also Lord of the Sabbath\u201d (vv. 27, 28).<\/p>\n I love the simplicity in which Jesus corrects the misguided Pharisees who, in professing the day, had missed its blessing: Don\u2019t take what God made for<\/em> us and turn it against<\/em> us. Jesus can say this because He is \u201cLord of the Sabbath.\u201d That\u2019s it in a nutshell.<\/p>\n As simple as Jesus\u2019 reply is in this situation, it blows my mind how far-reaching it is. Jesus addresses the origin (\u201cmade\u201d), the intent (\u201cfor\u201d), and the scope (\u201cman\u201d\/humanity) of the Sabbath.<\/p>\n As in a later argument over marriage and divorce (10:2-12), you can almost hear Jesus saying, \u201cBut from the beginning of the creation, God \u2018made . . .\u2019\u201d (v. 6). Christ can take us back to creation and claim lordship over it because as the Word of God, He was there (John 1:1-3). He made<\/em> it all and knows its purpose as only the Creator can. Let\u2019s head back to the beginning now and find the Lord of the Sabbath there.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Thus the heavens and the earth, and all the host of them, were finished. And on the seventh day God ended His work which He had done, and He rested on the seventh day from all His work which He had done. Then God blessed the seventh day and sanctified it, because in it He rested from all His work which God had created and made (Genesis 2:1-3).<\/p>\n If this were all the Bible ever said about Sabbath, I\u2019d be asking, \u201cHow do I get in on this blessed day?\u201d<\/p>\n The first thing declared \u201choly\u201d in Scripture isn\u2019t a thing<\/em> at all but the day<\/em> in which God ceased from His creative work, having declared it all \u201cvery good.\u201d The \u201choly\u201d points us away from things made and the labors by which they are made, to what transcends and enriches it all: God. By His example we sense the call to let go and trust Him.<\/p>\n Further, the blessing of the seventh day is not the first \u201cblessing\u201d of creation week. By the time God \u201crested\u201d (shabath<\/em>, root of Sabbath<\/em>), He\u2019d already blessed the living creatures created on the fifth day (1:20-23) and man (adam,<\/em> or\u201d humanity\u201d), created \u201cin His image\u201d (vv. 26-28) on the sixth. The sixth day was God\u2019s creative peak, and His blessing the seventh indicates that creation\u2019s goal is our final rest in God.<\/p>\n When God blesses humanity, He addresses them personally (v. 28). On the heels of this intimate blessing of those shaped in His image and called to flourish, God ends His work and blesses the seventh day, resting with His creation. These two blessings interrelate and correlate. The final touch, Sabbath, was not blessed for its own sake but for the sake of the blessed<\/em> \u2014 those who would labor after God, imitating Him.<\/p>\n The blessed man followed by the blessed day establishes the priority to which Jesus spoke in Mark 2:27, 28. The one precedes the other, the latter enriches the former, and God, who blesses both, is Lord over all.<\/p>\n Like marriage, another divine institution woven into the created order prior to man\u2019s fall, Sabbath is neither named nor commanded in Genesis 2. Like that first marriage, it is simply, sublimely modeled by Divine initiative, its invitation extended to the first adam<\/em> and all who follow.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Beyond Eden, sin distorts and robs people of God\u2019s best gifts, as we saw in Mark 2 and 10 with Sabbath and marriage. Our God-given \u201cdominion\u201d has been subverted by pride so that Sabbath is either overlooked or oppressive, its blessing lost. We need a change of heart.<\/p>\n God\u2019s creatures may forget or resist this blessed day, ignore it, or resent it, but to no avail. It remains. Sabbath is blessed and holy however I may choose to acknowledge it, or not. It\u2019s just the way the world is, the way God the Word made it. Sabbath continues to witness to the truth that our Creator and Redeemer is, relentlessly, for us<\/em>:<\/p>\n This biblical witness anticipates Christ\u2019s words that the Sabbath was made for us \u2014 God\u2019s work in Christ \u2014 and the new covenant written on the hearts of all who trust Him (Jeremiah 31:33; Hebrews 8:10). Jesus embodied Sabbath when He went about working miracles of restoration, especially on Sabbath. This kingdom, now and not yet, this King, come and coming, are Sabbath-shaped \u2014 a blessing of rest and restoration for the world (Hebrews 4:9; Matthew 11:28-30).<\/p>\n It does indeed take more than Divine example and command to live Sabbath-shaped lives. Our proud, restless hearts resist God\u2019s blessing. It takes the full operation of God in Christ through the Spirit to embody Isaiah\u2019s vision of lives set free from their own works and pursuits in order to call Sabbath a delight and to delight in Sabbath\u2019s Lord (58:13, 14).<\/p>\n Reading the stories of gospel, of creation, and of law and prophets, it\u2019s impossible for me to evade the scriptural weight of Sabbath-as-blessing-for-us<\/em>.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Now the night is far past. I\u2019m still sitting here, pecking away, lost in my Sabbath thoughts on the best<\/em> and blessed<\/em> day of the week.<\/p>\n I\u2019m praying for us all to find that blessed delight this Sabbath and the next and the one after that. To delightfully model Sabbath blessing just as God the Father and His Son have shown us.BA<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The week has passed. My work is done. Sun has set; Sabbath is here. I\u2019m so ready.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":14,"featured_media":2105,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"sync_status":"","episode_type":"","audio_file":"","castos_file_data":"","podmotor_file_id":"","cover_image":"","cover_image_id":"","duration":"","filesize":"","filesize_raw":"","date_recorded":"","explicit":"","block":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[37],"tags":[],"yoast_head":"\nLord of Sabbath<\/h2>\n
Then God blessed<\/h2>\n
Delight in the Lord<\/h2>\n
\n
Sabbath blessing<\/h2>\n