Why sabbath?
Maybe it’s a question you’ve asked yourself before. Maybe it’s never crossed your mind. Either way, it’s an important question to ask and answer.
Without getting into the finer details, this has been a question throughout Christian history. And while I’m not a Sabbatarian, I have come to see the wisdom of sabbath for life in God’s world, particularly for life in a technologically decadent society like modern America. My wife recently labeled such a position a “sabbather” – and I’m running with it.
To explain why I’m a sabbather, I want to “briefly” consider four sabbath texts that highlight God’s good purpose in sabbath. And as a result, just maybe this will lead you to reconsider sabbath as a practice in your own – and your family’s – discipleship to Jesus.
Genesis 1-2
God rested. Yes, even God rests.
In the Genesis creation week, God worked 6 days and rested 1. Listen to Genesis 2:
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. (2:2-3)
In contemporary society, we push to go as hard and as fast and as long as we can. If you don’t “grind”, you won’t make it to the top – or so we tell each other. But from the opening page of the Bible, we are presented with a God who knows how to rest, who knows his worth isn’t in his work, who knows there’s a time to work and a time to settle in and delight. This God marks one day in seven as different, set apart, holy. And it is his desire that his human creatures, whom he deeply loves, would join him in this pattern for their good and his glory.
However, partnering with God in this “six and one” pattern confronts each of us in various ways. It forces us to face our limitations: bodily, temporal, emotional, spiritual, relational, vocational limitations. It forces us to admit we don’t run the world. It forces us to confess that when it comes down to it, we are not indispensable. It forces us to respect our God-given and dignified creatureliness, and to remember that human value does not stem from what we do or contribute but from who God says we are. It forces us to entrust ourselves to God’s good and sovereign care.
What if what feels “normal” and “just the way things work today” is actually inhumane and idolatrous, simultaneously treating humans as less than human (without dignity) and treating humans as though they were God (without limits)? If God’s own pattern of work and rest is 6 and 1, do we really think we can live fulfilling and fruitful lives by going 24/7?
Sabbath is part of God’s own pattern. When we seek to do more than him, we do so at our peril.
Genesis 2
Let me highlight one more thing from Genesis 2. Did you notice that God “blessed” the seventh day? What does it mean for God to bless a day?
In the Genesis creation story, God blesses 3 things: animals, humans, and the sabbath day. To the animals, “God blessed them and said, ‘Be fruitful and multiply’” (1:22). To the humans, “God blessed them and said, ‘Be fruitful and multiply’” (1:28). In these first two cases, God’s blessing is connected with the capacity for generating life.
What does this mean for the sabbath day?
As John Mark Comer explains, “It means that the Sabbath—just like an animal or a human being—has the life-giving capacity to procreate. To fill the world up with more life… The Sabbath is how we fill our souls back up with life.”1
The sabbath is a day contrary to the other six – this is what it means to be holy/set apart. While we pour ourselves out for life and mission with God for six days, he blesses one day for us to be poured back into. Sabbath is the time when God’s own life and vitality rejuvenates and reinvigorates us. It’s a time when God fuels us up to partner with him for another six days.
But don’t misunderstand: we don’t earn our one day of rest by putting in our six days of work. Rather, we are given six days to work and one day to rest. In the words of Alan Fadling, “Rest and work are both gifts of God.”2 In God’s economy, we are invited to work from a place of rest, contentment, and delight rather than working to achieve rest, contentment, and delight.
God invites you into this blessed way of being through the sabbath. We miss out on the life God desires to give us when we reject his gift of sabbath. If you are feeling exhausted and beat down by the demands of this world to go, produce, and achieve; if you’re feeling far from God, spiritually dry, and unfulfilled in your walk with him; take God’s invitation, receive the sabbath, and taste of the blessed life he longs to give you.
In God’s economy, we are invited to work from a place of rest, contentment, and delight rather than working to achieve rest, contentment, and delight.
Deuteronomy 5
Did you know there were two different rationales offered for the sabbath command in the Mosaic law? In Exodus 20, God ties the command to “Remember the Sabbath” to his own work in creation. Just as God worked six days and rested one, so should he people (20: 9-11). But after 40 years in the wilderness, as a new generation prepares to enter the promise land, Moses modifies the rationale for sabbath. In Deuteronomy 5, Moses teaches:
Observe the Sabbath day, to keep it holy, as the Lord your God commanded you. Six days you shall labor and do all your work…You shall remember that you were a slave in the land of Egypt, and the Lord your God brought you out from there with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm. Therefore the Lord your God commanded you to keep the Sabbath day. (5:12-13, 15)
This rationale roots sabbath not in God’s work in creation but in redemption, particularly in his deliverance of Israel from slavery in Egypt. Why the change? Probably because this was the first generation of Israelites in a long while who grew up in freedom rather than slavery. Their parents and grandparents and great-great-great grandparents were slaves in Egypt. And “Slaves don’t get a Sabbath,” notes John Mark Comer. “They don’t even get a day off. They work all day, every day, until they die. Slaves are subhuman.”3 This generation needed fresh guidance on how to live under God’s generous rule rather than under the oppressive rule of Egypt.
But you see, while God liberated Israel from Egypt, there was a lot of Egypt still in Israel. When you are subjected to 400 years of forced labor without regular rest, that has an effect. Sabbath, therefore, was one of God’s means to get “Egypt” out of his people: Egyptian values, Egyptian customs, Egyptian worship, the Egyptian mode of being. Sabbath was a means of grace for Israel to resist the lure of returning to life as it was in Egypt and to train them in God’s ways.
And dare I say it… ancient Egypt may be long gone, but “Egypt” is still in us. American culture is driven by Egyptian values. Just look around.
Therefore, sabbath is still a weekly reminder of the life that God invites us into – it’s not dominated by work, production, accumulation, and achievement, but faith, hope, love, joy and peace. Sabbath is still a way of resisting the tyrannical powers and taskmasters of the world, the systems and institutions that draw us to serve them above all else. Sabbath is still part and parcel of our rebellion against the human revolution that began in Genesis 3.
Mark 2
Like any good gift from God, sabbath can be twisted and corrupted. This was the case in Jesus’ day and explains why he had such frequent conflict with the religious leaders concerning sabbath. Sabbath law had become so restrictive that the day was defined by what you were not allowed to do.
Perhaps this resonates with your own experience with sabbath. If you were raised in a context where sabbath was a day you were forced to “do nothing”, Jesus has a word for you.
In Mark 2, Jesus and his disciples were criticized for breaking the sabbath by picking heads of grain. In their defense, Jesus offers the example of David in 1 Samuel 21, where it appears he also breaks sabbath regulations. But his conclusion is key. Jesus says, “The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath” (2:27).
What Jesus was reminding his accusers of was this: sabbath was a God-given gift for man, not a burden to hold over them. “God never meant Sabbath,” writes Alan Fadling, “to be an enslaving, “you can’t” day as much as a freeing, “you don’t have to” day.”4 Do you hear the difference?
Yes, sabbath is a kind of restriction or limit. But it’s a limit against the demands and pressures of everyday existence. Sabbath is a day when we step back and rest in the truth that life itself is a gift to be enjoyed, not merely sustained. It is a day during which you have divine authorization to say “no” to emails, schoolwork, meetings, chores, and more, in order to “yes” to everything that makes life worth living. Sabbath was made for man.
Don’t you want to practice sabbath?
When I reflect on these passages, sabbath sounds like the best day of the week. And I’ve come to believe it truly is!
Nevertheless, making this day a core practice in your discipleship to Jesus will mean making some hard decisions (more on that another time). I implore you, though, don’t let that stop you!
Ask yourself: what about sabbath inclines my soul towards it? Let your aspirations guide you to take a step of faith towards the life God wants to give you.
Comer, Ruthless Elimination of Hurry. 156-157.
Fadling, An Unhurried Life. 119.
Comer, Ruthless Elimination of Hurry. 165.
Fadling, An Unhurried Life. 117.