Commanding Rest

I get a lot of coffee with people. I don’t actually drink coffee, so I drink chai, or tea, or just hot water, but the point remains the same; I sit and talk with a lot of people. It just comes with the territory of pastoring. I’ve found that most people ask a similar question in many different ways. The question may sound like, “Christian, what is one thing that has changed your life recently?”, or “Christian, if you could give one piece of advice what would give?”, or “Christian, what has helped you most?”. Truth be told, five years ago you couldn’t have coßnvinced me of the answer that I give today to all of those questions. 

Sabbath. 

Yup. Easy as that. Sabbath. Sabbath has changed my life.

Many Christians have likely heard about Sabbath, yet many Christians don’t know much about it, let alone have experienced and lived into it. I get it, that was where I was. At points in my life there probably wasn’t a more opposite description of my life than Sabbath. 

There are a ton of different definitions and explanations of Sabbath. In short, I like the summary that Sabbath is to stop, delight, rest, and worship. Easy enough. I don’t have time to explain Sabbath in this post, and there’s so much fantastic material out there already on it. Let me just get to the most common reasons that people give me to explain why they cannot (but really will not) keep Sabbath. 

Typically people who resist the thought of observing Sabbath as a weekly rhythm in their life tell me that keeping Sabbath seems like “legalism”. In essence, they tell me something about how Christianity is about relationship and not religion, and how we don’t need to keep the Biblical law code to have relationship with God because of what Jesus (God) has done. So now all of that Old Testament stuff, including Sabbath, is out. That was me. I get it. So let me resist you resisters for a moment with the slightly sarcastic question of “WHAT?!” followed by a “DO YOU HEAR YOURSELF?”.

First off, Christianity is a religion. We need to just be okay with that. I get the point of the mantra “relationship not religion” but it is not completely true. Christianity is a religion. It is a religion of and about relationship, but it is a religion nonetheless. I would actually push back against you and say that the world, people, me, and you need religion. The Western world has, dare I say, a weird belief that the highest ethic is personal freedom and self-expression. Basically, chart your own path, follow your dreams, pursue happiness, just don’t hurt anybody. In other words, “No rules.” I’ve noticed that the some of the Church in the Western world has taken up that mantra too. People live in a world where there really is no structure or framework to guide them outside themselves, then they come to the Church and experience the same thing… but I’m getting off topic. My point is this: Christianity has a way of life that people are invited to step into. There are rules in this religion. There is the great command “To love God and others.” There are also the famous Ten Commandments. 

It’s interesting to me that no one would ever really throw out the other nine commandments because of Jesus. I never hear anyone say, “Because Jesus came and died and was raised, we can throw out ‘Thou shalt not murder’.” No one says, “Because of Jesus, ‘Thou shalt not lie’ is off the table and anyone who suppresses lying is being legalistic.” Actually, no one gets rid of any of the ten commandments under the guise of legalism, except Sabbath. 

For some strange reason, Sabbath is the only one of the Ten Commandments that seems to be argued as legalistic.

I think there’s a reason. I think we throw out Sabbath as legalism because we cannot imagine a God who is so good that He would command His people to stop, rest, delight, and worship as a weekly rhythm. We cannot imagine a God who has a command that is inviting us into something good. We believe deep down that commands exist because God is trying to get us to stop doing bad things, when in all reality, every command that God gives is His loving invitation into life and joy and peace and contentment. We call Sabbath legalism because we don’t really understand God’s grace.

God’s grace does not remove the call of commandments. Actually, Jesus comes on the scene and essentially says that the command to not murder is too light. Instead the command is really not to even have any form of hate or superiority in your heart. Jesus, the expression of grace, is not one that gets rid of rules, He actually shows the full heart posture that the rules stem from. The rules, the commands, are God showing us how we are designed to live. Interestingly enough that while Sabbath is not the first command that God gave to us, it is the first command that He modeled for us.

As you can tell already, this blog post could easily become six different blogs. So let me stop while I’m a little more focused. Sabbath is God’s command for our good. God— yes let me say it again for the folks in the back— GOD can command us to do things. The question is, “What sort of God is He and what does this God command?”

A God Who commands rest?  A God who lives from a place of rest? A God who died to lead His people into rest? A God who invites all creation into rest? What does that God have to gain from paying for and leading people into rest? Nothing. It is just who this God is. This God is a God who is good and kind and compassionate.

A God who simply commands rest I may not obey, but a God who dies to give me rest I can fully trust.

Maybe that’s our real problem? Maybe we don’t observe Sabbath because we forget that God died and has done everything He can to give us rest. Maybe we just can’t stop because somewhere deep down we are still slaves to our lifestyle even though God has announced that we are free indeed. Maybe this problem and all our problems stem from the simple fact that we falsely imagine a God who is more like us, and therefore less good, when God is way better than we can even imagine. Maybe God is so good that He commands us to stop, rest, delight, and worship. Maybe God is just that good and maybe he commands things for our good. 

We all want a good life. That’s why we do so many different things. That’s why we have so many good things going on in our lives. Yet for all the good things going on, life doesn’t always feel good. We need something to make our lives really good, so we ask for advice from others. I think Sabbath is changing my life because it keeps showing me that God is gooder than everything else that I have going on in my life. That’s what I really needed. I needed a good God. Sabbath is my weekly reminder, my weekly experience, my weekly reset into the reality that God is better than I could ever imagine.