The Crisis of the Disappearing Sunday

This morning, we look at the idea of why we meet on a Sunday. Why the church meets together like we do this morning on a Sunday to sort of break away from the normal routines of life and bring our thoughts and our time to God like we do. One of the reflections from lots of people during the COVID lockdowns was that we experienced rest in a way that few of us ever did. People were surprised when they weren't racing out of the house early in the morning for work, not rushing from school drop-offs to grocery shopping, back to childcare drop-offs, then to doctor's appointments, then back to school for pick-ups, and then finally to music lessons and being home for homework and starting dinner. Exhausting.

People were surprised that they felt better not having those routines in their lives. The fact is that for many of us, lockdowns showed what a quieter, more slowed down life could look like. And a lot of us found it refreshing. This isn't surprising since it's almost a universal observation that society is gripped by a crisis of busyness. Not good busyness.

Lives are crammed with too many things. This crisis of busyness stands at the heart of something else that has been facing God's church for a long time now, and that is the crisis of a disappearing Sunday. The crisis of a disappearing Sunday. And what I mean by this is the juggling that Christians go through every week on what their Sunday should look like that week. Is it a church Sunday this week?

Or is it a family Sunday? Or is it a surfing Sunday? This morning, I want us to realise that the priorities of our Sunday and its connection with church attendance, with public worship, and the observance of what's traditionally been called the Sabbath day, the priorities of our Sunday is nothing else but a total misunderstanding of God's command for us to rest. As we'll hopefully see from today's sermon, rest when biblically understood is a shared activity. Rest is a shared activity.

In fact, you could say that rest is a church activity. Rest in the individual life and in the life of the family is a vital part of being God's church. Let's begin by thinking about what the Bible has to say about the topic of rest, focused supremely by this idea of the Sabbath. Firstly, we see a command to rest in the work of creation. It's a surprising, perhaps even stunning realisation that in the Old Testament, resting is a command.

You must rest, God told His people. Now, we hear that and we think, why on earth would anyone need to be commanded to rest? You would think people would need to be commanded to work instead. And yet throughout the Old Testament, we find God's command to observe a Sabbath day as one of the defining marks of being a godly people. One of the marks of what made God's people God's people was that they took time to rest, as we saw this morning in Isaiah 58.

Now, this rest was enshrined in the legal foundations of the people known as Israel. It was in the law which was founded on the ten commandments. In fact, the fourth command is a law about this particular day of resting known as Shabbat, a word which means to stop, to cease. Cast your minds back to the moment when the ten commandments were given by God to Israel. God had just rescued a people out of slavery, seven days of work, twenty four hours a day in Egypt, and then gave them this as one of the tenets of their new society under God.

Exodus 20:8. Remember the Sabbath day by keeping it holy. Six days you shall labour and do all your work, but the seventh day is a Sabbath to the Lord your God. On it, you shall not do any work, neither you, nor your son or daughter, nor your male or female servant, nor your animals, nor any foreigner residing in your towns. For in six days, the Lord made the heavens and the earth, the sea and all that is in them, but He rested on the seventh day. Therefore, the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy.

Think about it. The Sabbath command in the ten commandments is a central pillar to the life of God's people. So much so that it is described as being one of the signs of God's covenant with His people. Notice, however, that the Sabbath command is framed not merely in the context of Israel's relationship to God, it's not framed in their enjoyment of the land flowing with milk and honey. The Sabbath in the ten commandments is grounded in something that happened all the way back at creation.

It references Genesis 2 and God's work of creating everything, which took six days, but then on a separate seventh day, God designated as a day of rest. Genesis 2:2-3 reads, and on the seventh day, God finished His work that He had done and He rested on the seventh day from all His work that He had done. So God blessed the seventh day and made it holy because on it, God rested from all His work that He had done in creation. What we find in the ten commandments then is that God commands a Sabbath rest based on the pattern that God instituted at creation. We see in Genesis 2 that God blesses this seventh day.

There's something extraordinary about that day. God calls it holy. And by doing that, God marks it as different from all the other days. And then in the ten commandments, God tells His people, you now need to make a difference also. I made a difference, now you make it different.

And what is different about it? Rest. That's what's different about it. Rest. So in the Old Testament, we see that the Sabbath day is actually not instituted at Sinai, at Mount Sinai in the ten commandments.

It's been woven into the very fabric of creation itself from the beginning. God had worked six days in creating, but He rests on the seventh from His work, and He designates that day as a holy or special day and says that our work routine needs to be guided by the same principle. I personally think that it's a significant thing to realise when you read the Genesis account of creation, God's first interaction with Adam would have been on His day of rest. God creates Adam and Eve on the sixth day. Right?

The very pinnacle of creation and Adam and Eve experienced God on His day of rest. This leads theologians like Karl Barth and Old Testament scholars like Claus Westermann to conclude that creation's purpose, in fact, the very purpose of mankind was always to commune with God in His rest. In other words, of the significance of the Sabbath day being included in the creation narrative, Klaus Westermann writes this: God's blessing on the day bestows on this special holy solemn day a power which makes it fruitful for human existence. God's blessing gives the day the power to stimulate, animate, enrich, and give fullness to life. It is not the day in itself that is blessed, but rather the day in its significance for the community.

From the institution of the Sabbath day command, the rest of the Old Testament narrative then shows us how fiercely God tries to protect this beautiful and significant rhythm. So God commands in Exodus 20, fourth command, rest. And then Israel, in its obedience and disobedience, is constantly juggling this command. So much so that we get to Isaiah 58, like we read this morning and God is again in exile reminding His people, take your Sabbath day. Honour it.

Delight in it. We see Israel failing again and again to live as God's people and when they do, one of the first things to go was the observance of a Sabbath day. So that's the first observation of the biblical command of a Sabbath rest. It is found in the routine of God's work in creation. Then the second command of rest, we find in relation to salvation.

You may have noticed that we've only so far looked at the Old Testament evidence. We don't yet touch on the New Testament. In fact, many Christians today look at the New Testament and either point out that there's no direct command given to Christians to observe the Sabbath anymore, or that we are in fact commanded to throw out the Sabbath rest idea completely. They will go to places like Paul in Romans 14:5, which says, one person considers one day more sacred than another, another considers every day alike. Each of them should be fully convinced in their own mind.

Or they'll argue that in the book of Hebrews, with the argument being made that the old covenant has been replaced by the new, that this infers in some way that the Sabbath, part of the old covenant supposedly, has been done away with. In fact, non-Christians will gleefully point out the seeming inconsistency that while God was extravagantly generous in the Old Testament about giving His people a day of rest, it seems that when we get to the New Testament, God wants us back working twenty four seven again. But all of these arguments overlook the words of Jesus Himself when He spoke on the Sabbath. Jesus tells us that the rest of the Sabbath is God's gift to us. A gift presumably God doesn't take back.

When Jesus was confronted about the meaning of the Sabbath, He told a group of Pharisees that the Sabbath was created for man, not man for the Sabbath. The Sabbath created for man, not man for the Sabbath. Meaning, God made the Sabbath to benefit us. Even as Jesus corrects the Pharisees' warped understanding and their skewed application of the fourth commandment, Jesus never revokes the day of rest. And significantly, friends, neither does the rest of the New Testament.

In fact, what we see in the New Testament is the other focus of the Sabbath becoming all the more evident. Not simply is the Sabbath a delighting in God's creative work, which is Exodus 20. Right? God worked six days. He rested on the seventh.

But the seventh also, the Sabbath also has this second focus. It is to delight in God's work of salvation. In Deuteronomy 5, where we find the ten commandments repeated again, there's only twice that it's listed like this in the Old Testament. Exodus 20, Deuteronomy 5.

It's in Moses' great sermon to the people before they go into the promised land. Moses repeats it, but this time, when it comes to the fourth commandment on the Sabbath, God adds these words: Observe the Sabbath day, remember that you were slaves in Egypt and that the Lord your God brought you out of there with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm. Therefore, the Lord your God has commanded you to observe the Sabbath day. Interesting. You were slaves.

God rescued you. Therefore, observe the Sabbath day. At the heart of the command to rest is a remembrance and a delight in what God has done to save His people from slavery, from an enslavement to enemies and to work that kills you. In re-explaining the Sabbath command, Moses reminds the people that they had been saved from a captivity and that the Sabbath now was to be a rest day to remember their freedom. And then when we come to the New Testament, that emphasis of the Sabbath rest moves explicitly towards this focus.

But of course, ultimately now realised in Jesus Christ. When the book of Hebrews shows us how the new covenant has been fulfilled by Jesus, it does so with a framework of the Sabbath. Have a look at Hebrews 4:9. There remains then a Sabbath rest for the people of God. For anyone who enters God's rest also rests from their works, just as God did from His.

Let us therefore make every effort to enter that rest, so that no one will perish by following Israel's example of disobedience. The work used here references the good works needed to fulfil the law, but the Bible is saying here, God has invited us into a rest by placing our trust in Jesus Christ, who has now satisfied the righteous requirements of the law. We now rest from the endless toil of trying to save ourselves in God's presence, and instead we enjoy God and a relationship with Him in reconciled peace. It takes us back to Adam and Eve enjoying God on the seventh day. But notice that the concept of Sabbath is used here.

It is the hook which we understand the state of eternal joy in God's presence. We are called into a Sabbath rest as Christians through Jesus Christ. And then at various places in the New Testament, we see the early church moving their days from the Jewish Sabbath, the Saturday, to the Sunday. Right? That's been a categorical shift for the Christians and we see that in the New Testament already.

They call it the Lord's Day now. Why? Because the Sunday is the day that Jesus rose from the grave. And yet, the early Christians, ex-Jews, still make that day a day of meeting together, of praying together, of breaking away from the other routines of the week. We don't see that they throw the baby out with the bathwater and stop the Sabbath pattern.

Okay. So we see those two emphases of the Sabbath rest, a physical rest from weekly work to enjoy celebrating and reflecting God's power both in creation and in salvation. Now, we have to ask the question, what do we do with the Sabbath? You might be surprised to know that technically, we have a government-mandated double Sabbath as Australians. Did you know that?

We have a Saturday and a Sunday where we don't have to work. Actually, across the history of humanity, our Saturday-Sunday weekend is a new concept. It's only been the case for maybe the last two hundred years since the industrial age began that we typically have this two days off. What does this mean? Well, firstly, it means that you have no excuse not to rest.

You have no excuse not to rest. We have two days to spend on resting. But as Christians, it means that we can do all our jet skiing, all our power boating, all our shed tinkering and craft stickering on the Saturday, and give God back His Sunday. We can assign back on our Sunday the power and the vitality at the heart of the Sabbath, to remember and to rejoice in the power of God in creation and His power in our salvation. You see, the problem isn't whether we actually have enough time to rest.

We have more rest now than more people in history ever have. The problem of our rest is actually a problem of the heart. When I talk to people, I often discover that their non-working lives tend to be crammed with as much recreational activity as their working lives. In fact, some could argue they try to squeeze in more stuff on their weekends than they accomplish in their working weeks. But while camping, fishing, reading, renovating, painting, branching are all really nice things to do.

They may not be all the things that God wants you to do. You see friends, the power of the Sabbath didn't mainly lie in rest from work, but in the dwelling with God component of that rest. The truth is no matter how much you reconfigure your weekend, it's entirely possible to have a weekend full of fun, non-work-related activity and actually find that you don't have rest at all. You are exhausted by the end of it. The problem of the Sabbath for so many of us is not simply an issue of not having enough time, the problem is one of the heart.

Unless we give up the love of ourselves, there won't be any space left in our hearts for God and that is the truth. So how do we reassert the place of the Sabbath rest in our lives? How do we capture it and protect it in the life of our family? Well, here are a couple of thoughts you might like to write down and think about and discuss with your family this morning. Firstly, put church back at the centre of your Sunday.

Church shouldn't compete with all your other ambitions. Your ambitions need to give way to your weekly routine of worshipping the God and the Saviour of your life in the way that He wants to be worshipped. But then secondly, the Sabbath is also not for you to spend all your time at church. More and more authors are starting to make a real point of this, and it's probably true. The fact is church services have become such big shows, run with such high performance excellence, perhaps in order to compete with all the other attractive things out there, to make it another show to come to.

But it is so busy that the musicians, the caterers, the facility managers, and the dozens of staff employed by the bigger churches experience Sunday as the most exhausting day in their week. The Sabbath has not been given for that either. We need to somehow retain its character of resting from busyness and some of our churches need to think seriously about how to balance that expectation of public worship and to treat their staff and their volunteers with more respect. Thirdly, rest from busyness is centred on you enjoying God and His creative power, so enjoy creation. On your Sabbath, you can and you should enjoy a beautiful walk by the beach.

Gone are the old Dutch Reformed days that you can't go to the beach. You can't go and have a picnic in the park. You can't kick a footy in the park. You can and you should kick a footy in the park, spend time playing board games as a family because the beach, as part of God's good creation, or your physical exercise in kicking a footy, or the togetherness of the family you've been given, are all aspects of rejoicing in God's creative purpose, His creative power. And all of those things I believe can and should be enjoyed on your Sabbath.

Fourthly, rest from busyness rather is centred on you enjoying God and His saving power. So one is creative power in point three, and this is on His saving power, so enjoy fellow saints. There's something revitalising about remembering God's goodness with other believers. So on the one hand, we can come together as a church and we have corporate worship together. We encourage one another by being together like this, but then there's something beautiful about intently experiencing togetherness with a handful of believers on your Sabbath.

Why? Because when you do, you get the opportunity to talk about God's grace and goodness together. Invite people over for lunch after church, break bread together and you'll see that wholesomeness of the Sabbath start permeating your life. I can't tell you, I mean, I'm the weird one. I work on the Sabbath.

Right? And I can't tell you how wrecked I am by the end of a Sunday. It's an early morning and usually a bad sleep on a Saturday night. But the times I'm invited over to people's houses after church or I invite people over to my place and spend time with them and hear what God is doing in their lives, I'm gonna be physically wrecked by the end of the day, but man, I am revitalised, I am energised, and I am encouraged by the God who has done such an amazing work in these brothers or sisters' lives. That is rest for me in the truest sense.

Rest from busyness is centred on you enjoying God and His saving power, so enjoy it with fellow saints. And then lastly, necessary shift work is the exception rather than the rule. Whenever someone preaches on Sunday and it's rest, whenever the subject of Sabbath rest is mentioned, someone will always ask about our police officers, doctors, plumbers, who either need to be working on Sunday or might get called out for emergencies. To that question, I will say, obviously, there are times when a Sunday rest just can't happen like we've been talking about. But I want to add that if you can at all not work on that Sunday, do that.

If there's any negotiating room, get out of that Sunday shift. Notice also that I use the term necessary shift work. The temptation for many people, especially our young people, is to get a Sunday shift because it offers time and a half or double time pay. And the irony is, they work a double time shift on a Sunday so that they can get Wednesday and Friday off. That is not how it works.

The reason the government gives you time and a half on a Sunday is because it is a sacrifice. You are giving something up and they are paying you to give up your Sabbath. You don't have to give it to them. Work your five days, work your six days if you want to and keep your Sunday as your Sunday. So there are five things at least that you can think about in applying the Sabbath day principle to your life and I know that there's gonna be all sorts of different takes on that and we are at liberty to decide for ourselves whether we allow ourselves to have brunch on a Sunday and pay for someone to make our breakfast for us.

Various people will fall on different positions on that, but at least five principles for us to think through. In closing, I wanna say that you and I need to be reminded as a church of the Sabbath work that Jesus ultimately did for us. He summed it up this way Himself. Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls.

For my yoke is easy and my burden is light. Friends, our hearts need to be lifted up and brought into the rest of Jesus Christ again and again and again. We need to carry into our weeks every single Sunday. We need to be reminded of God's great pattern of creation that we need a calibration towards resting in Him, not just once a year, not just once a month, not just on alternating weeks when we manage our time. We need it every week.

Resist the crowding out of God in your lives, resist the exhaustion from too much activity and allow you and your family to find the rest we truly need, the rest of knowing God in all His power, supremely displayed in Jesus Christ. Let's pray. Lord Jesus, we thank you that this morning we are reminded to come to you for rest. And some of us, Lord, we may have lives that are full of fun and we might mistake fun for rest. We might mistake toys for rest.

Lord, we perhaps are so busy that we don't even know what rest looks like. Help us to have a hunger and a need to experience the wholesomeness and the fullness that you desire for us. Lord, help us as your people at Open House to love to worship you on a Sunday, to feel hollow and empty when we don't. Lord, I pray for us and even for those brothers and sisters that aren't here today because they have chosen something else. Lord, help us to experience anything other than the rest and the routine that you want of us on a Sunday to taste like ash in our mouth, to be so unfulfilling that we will desire the milk and the honey that you give us in your Sabbath rest.

Lord, help us to always think about how to prioritise our life according to your principles and help us to do so with wisdom in everything that we have, in all the permutations of our respective lives and the complexities of it, help us to know what is right and then to have the determination, the willpower to do it. In Jesus' name, we pray. Amen.