Lord of the Sabbath

Mattew 12: 1-14

The Reformer's Fire
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Exposition by Max A Forsythe

Question 60:
How is the Sabbath to be sanctified?
Answer 60:
The Sabbath is to be sanctified by a holy resting all that day, even from such worldly employments and recreations as are lawful on other days, and spending the whole time in the public and private exercises of God's worship, except so much as is to be taken up in the works of necessity and mercy.

One of the great tensions in our American political heritage is the working out of individual rights and responsibilities. The very debates of this past week are cutting to the heart of what it means to be a responsible person before Congressand the Constitution, before the watching world and the media sharks, and finally before the throne of grace. How much I would like to be preaching about the seventh commandment this week, but our providential scheduling in these matters would call us to consider instead the sanctification of the Lord's Day So quite appropriately may I encourage you to put the public media titillations of the week behind and look instead at how we may honor our God and King by our common discourse and our individual thinking.

Let me begin by asking how many of you are masters of your own mind? I once dealt plainly with a teenager on certain idyll temptations that kept growing stronger and stronger. I laid before him his responsibility to not think of those particular things or to indulge in fanciful games of fantasy which led him to consume his resources and time in roll playing satanic and sympathetic magic. I do not think I was too successful. He as well as many other people had no concept of a disciplined mind which might be controlled by its owner!

I know from experience that it is a daunting and difficult task and sometimes the first step is to decide that certain areas of thought, desire and wishful thinking might be banned for one day during the week - "Never on Sunday" is an essential step. Sometimes you forget, especially when you have a new magazine that came on Saturday and the centerfold map is a World War One game that you have been anticipating for months on end! Even George Patton and Stonewall Jackson tactifully respected the Sabbath whenever it was possible, so may we make a minimal effort to put our worldly interests away one day in seven as well.

Yet, as we see in the passage before us our rights in the matter of the Sabbath very often conflict with our responsibilities. We have to be very careful not to imitate the Pharisees in their body of human traditions which they imposed upon the Jewish people. Jesus is indeed the Lord of the Sabbath as we see this sectiontitled in the NIV translation. And our confession tells us that we are free to do the works of necessity and mercy. For some people, who do not have the freedom to schedule their work, the necessity of providing for their family mandates their attendance at work. Sadly, this is much more likely in our day and time than in several generations past.

We may also conclude from this passage that the work of the clergy and those who provide a ministry of mercy are free to labor as well. Consider the quandry of a remote Scottish island a few years ago. The local township trustees refused to allow their snow plow to be used on the Sabbath unless the ambulance had to go out. Some of the more modernistic residents could not relate to such antiquated concepts, after all, they only wanted to have the roads clear so that they could drive down to the ferry and cross over to another island where drinking and eating and entertainment were legal.

Aha, the difficulties of honoring the Sabbath are complex indeed in our day and age. Many years ago, our local fire department was being retrained according to a regular cycle and the trainer who was driving in from the state capital insisted on doing that training on Sunday morning. He refused to allow for any exceptions. The fire chief insisted that since I was preaching in the morning that I must be excused. The trainer didn't like the idea but it was so.

Now very many people would like a very simple explanation about what they can or cannot do on the Lord's Day. Just give me a list and if I agree with it, I will follow it. Sorry, you are not going to get that here. The only violation of the Sabbath that the session might possibly hear is if one of you would demand that another Christian do work against their will on the Lord's Day. What you choose to do with this day is between you and the true Lord of the Sabbath: Jesus Christ.

We see in this passage that it is indeed lawful to prepare food, do the ceremonial work of the church and to complete acts of mercy on the Lord's Day. We also note that the farmer is free to rescue his animals and to provide for their essential care. In a similar manner, other laborers are free to do what is absolutely essential to stay gainfully employeed. And the church does have a duty to schedule worship so that those who are financially enslaved have an opportunity to worship our Lord and our God. Hopefully, in a few years we may move in that direction by providing an alternative time to our traditional Sunday morning only. Some of you have still not met our Sunday evening couple who have been fairly regular in attending our Sunday evening prayer meeting for quite a few years now.

Yes you have a responsibility to be accountable to the Lord for your Lord's Day activities. And that responsibility does include your thoughts, wishes and desires with which you fill your mind on His day. But you also have the freedom in the Lord to lay your schedule, your career and your family's needs before Him to see what He will allow you to do with this very special day! May you wrestle faithfully with the complexities of this commandment even as you give Lordship of the Day over to Him whose Day it really is. Amen.

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