Good Morning,
Well, today is our last week in the Sabbath questions in the Shorter Catechism. Some are relieved, others might be asking for more. As much as I love the 4th Commandment even I am looking forward to hearing about how we are to relate to our Father and Mother next Thursday. Yet outside all that we come to the two questions that always get asked at this point: what can’t we do and an effort to give some further explanation of a term or two.
So let us go ahead and look at the questions for this week:
Q. 61. What is forbidden in the fourth commandment?
A. The fourth commandment forbids the omission or careless performance of the duties required, and the profaning the day by idleness, or doing that which is in itself sinful, or by unnecessary thoughts, words, or works, about our worldly employments or recreations.
Q. 62. What are the reasons annexed to the fourth commandment?
A. The reasons annexed to the fourth commandment are: God’s allowing us six days of the week for our own employments, His challenging a special propriety in the seventh, His own example, and His blessing the Sabbath-day.
Working through and seeing God’s gift in the law is an important part of understanding His purpose in providing for us these statutes. Two things of note on that front in the second catechism question are the Lord’s propriety and His example. It would be worthwhile to expound a little bit more on what we mean by those. First of all “propriety” means ownership. A legal term you might be aware of is “proprietorship”. The Creation is a “sole proprietorship”. That means the world and all that is in it not only belongs to God, but “…there is no legal distinction between the owner and the business entity.” In other words when it comes to the Sabbath the Lord has a special and unique right to set up and run His “business”, the Creation, however He sees fit. And as members of that world which He made we have no right to either question or ignore His design. So in the case of the Fourth Commandment it is His prerogative to designate a particular day to be a day of rest for His people, whether they be members of the covenant or not. By the very nature of God’s person it doesn’t matter. All the world, human and animal, plant and sea are to do no labor or engage in unnecessary works on the Sabbath. The law is a reflection of who He is.
However, Jehovah goes one step further. He also gives the example of His own resting on that day (as is repeated in Exodus 20 and Deuteronomy 5) so that we might follow likewise. For the Christian if we are (and we are) to be imitators of Christ, and to seek to grow in likeness to Him. So it makes perfect sense then if Jesus is the Second Person of the Holy Trinity and thereby rested on the seventh day of Creation than what are we saying to God if we refuse to heed His word and continue to act as if Sunday is just another day of the week where we can do whatever we want (as long as it is not sinful) is that He was foolish for resting on the seventh day of the creation week. Are we not also telling the Lord that not only do we not need what He has provided, but that we are uninterested in taking our cue from His own behavior to model our lives around? Not to be captain obvious here, yet I would think it to be a bad thing to act in a way contrary to the very God of Heaven and Earth. We must remember that the Sabbath is a good thing for the Believer. The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath. Sunday is our Sabbath rest in the new covenant (Heb. 4:9, 1 Cor. 16:1-2, Rev. 1:10) and a wonderful blessing to those who use it.
An attitude which doesn’t respect the will of God gets us into the first catechism question listed above, and those are things the Westminster Divines are noting the commandment forbids. Three words are vital for us to understand in the context of the law. Omission, careless, and unnecessary. Each of those builds upon what we noted about the “proprietorship” of the Lord in the giving of the statute. We can never forget that as men and women made in the image of God and if we are made such, and we are, then our highest good should always be to glorify Him and enjoy Him forever. And according to the Catechism how do we do that? By seeing the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost as our chief end. In other words if our lives are not ordered according to the wisdom of God can we be said to glorifying Him? No. One of the most idiotic (and I mean that) things human beings can say is “God and I have our own thing going on” when that “own thing” is disobeying Him and seeking to satisfy the flesh in those ways He expressly forbids in His word. Jesus ain’t impressed by your disobedience of His law. When it comes to the 4th Commandment it is important that we be found stewarding the Sabbath Day, being watchful in the ways we keep it, not as a burden or a yoke, but as a sweet inheritance from a living Father.
We easily see that when it comes to the Seventh and Eighth Commandments, even the Sixth and the Ninth. But why is it so hard for us to come to grips with this fact for the Fourth? It is primarily because the Sabbath law directly “attacks” us where we think we have the most control, and that is with our time. We have a strange relationship to it. It’s always happening around us. “When man plans the Lord laughs” may be a Yiddish phrase but it comes from a sound Biblical place. What we do with the moments God gives us we may think are up to us, but they are not. We are to walk in His paths and make use of the ancient trails drawn by faithful men and women down through the centuries. In all seriousness if we are considering ourselves to be Christian men and women it would be wise of us to make use of what the Lord gives, redeeming the time. Using it wisely for our benefit and His blessing.
All seven days of the week belong to God and we should be moved by His gracious gift of the clock to use every minute of it for His glory. However, the seventh day is special for the way it uniquely gives us a foretaste of Heaven itself. It’s part of the reason why we hallow it. For if we can’t handle the one day of the week set aside for spiritual rest and renewal than how are we going to take an entire eternity of rest in His presence?
Here is this week’s extra reading:
https://www.ligonier.org/posts/productivity-redeeming-your-time
Blessings in Christ,
Rev. Benjamin Glaser
Pastor, Bethany ARP Church