Real Talk: Sunday – rest or rules?
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Opening
The Sabbath is one of the most talked about and often misunderstood topics in Christian life. Some see it as an Old Testament practice that no longer applies today, while others focus just mainly on the rules. But what if the Sabbath is much more than that? In this episode, we're joined by Reverend Peter Holtvluwer, author of Foundations, a devotional on Genesis 1-3, and we'll explore the Sabbath from creation to Christ and beyond. Why did God give us a day of rest? How does the Sabbath point us to the rest that we have in Christ? Why do Christians worship on Sunday instead of Saturday? And what should the Lord's Day look like today? We'll look at why the Sabbath begins in creation and why that foundation matters. We'll also discuss practical questions about worship, two church services, Sunday activities, and how to avoid the extremes of legalism or treating Sunday like any other day. This episode is brought to you by ARPA Canada's Foundations Conference. When a nation replaces God with man, foundations crumble. What comes next? Register at arpacanada.ca.
Intro
The world's changing fast, but what questions should we really be asking? You're listening to Real Talk, a podcast presented by Reformed Perspective, where we take God's word and apply it to the nitty gritty of life. Buckle up for real questions, real answers, and real direction. This is Real Talk.
Lucas Holtvlüwer
Well, Dad, thanks for joining me back here on the Real Talk podcast. Good to have you back for a third time. So, joining a short list of third-time repeat guests, but glad to have you. So today we're going to be talking about Foundations, talking about Genesis one through three, and then with a specific focus on the Lord's Day and its rootedness in creation and how that kind of plays forth in our practices today, and also look at maybe some church history in that regard as well. So you've written a book of meditations on those first three chapters of Genesis. So do you want to just tell us a little bit about what kind of drew you to this new project, this new opportunity, this new book? Kind of some of the questions or issues you're seeing as a pastor in your work over the years, and kind of how you arrived at hey, I think this is the time to put this work out, and what are you what are you hoping to do with this kind of project?
Peter Holtvlüwer
Yeah, so already more than 20 years ago, I preached on Genesis 1, 2, and 3, and a couple of elders back in the day, tapped me on the shoulder and said, "You know what? It would be good to put that into writing for people to pick it up and read it further and study on study it further.” So after some hesitation, I did that. I just published them as sermons way back at least 16 years ago or so, and they served a good purpose, I think, in its in their time. I've since repreached those sermons, and then I heard from various people that they would prefer to have that material in meditation format rather than a sermon format. They felt it was easier to read, so I repreached it, I refreshed the whole series, and I added a couple of sermons to it, and then indeed I basically broke up those sermons into smaller meditations and made them chapters in what's now book Foundations. And why did I even revisit these chapters and why do I think the material is still, you know, useful for people? Well, those three first three chapters of the Bible, they really truly are foundational. Like I called the book Foundations. I really couldn't think of a better term, a better title to describe. There's so many subjects that were introduced to God, ourselves, humanity, our purpose on the earth, what we're what we're meant to do with our daily lives. What is work all about? A topic like the Sabbath day, the day of rest, is in there as well. Then you can think of marriage. You can think of the fall into sin. You can think too of how the Lord and His grace rescued us from our rebellion. And there's other topics that are sprinkled in there, and in the intervening time between the first series of sermons that I preached on it and the more recent series, you know crazy things happened in the world like transgenderism and the rise of homosexuality. Like homosexuality was on the rise when I first preached it, but it just went bananas in the 2010s and transgenderism really became mainstream in the in the mid 20 teens and still is mainstream so I thought yeah more than ever we need as God's people solid a solid understanding of the these foundational teachings in that God. Us in these early chapters, we're made male and female. We're made in the image of God. These things have weight and they have import and meaning, not just for the original readers of the Bible, but for all of mankind, all of history. So we really need to be well founded on these foundational elements, these foundational teachings. So yeah, that's why I have the book, the Lord willing will be coming out this summer. In fact, Reformed Book Services, where we are recording here today, they're going to have a presale, they told me today. So anybody interested in foundations can check out Reformed Book Services for their presale of Foundations.
LH
Awesome. So when you were writing this back in the day, 16 years ago or whatnot, was it more like evolution was more kind of the issue of the day, so to speak, that let's say younger people were kind of struggling with as they kind of were working out their faith and making it their own growing up in the church, especially.
PH
Yeah, that was a… it was a very hot topic in our reformed Canadian Reformed, United Reformed churches somewhere around 2010ish. There were debates in our Clarion magazine around that time on theistic evolution. So that those topics I think are still there. I think some people still are attracted to theistic evolution, but this book does deal with that. And I just walk through the what the Bible teaches in Genesis 1 and compare it to what evolution teaches and what theistic evolution teaches, and then come with the conclusion that yeah, those other teachings are wanting.
LH
Yep, yep. It does seem like the devil always goes after like these foundational type of truths as well with these lies to get us that seem easy to believe, but then if you don't examine the root of it, can really twist up your perspective and lead to a negative outcome that way.
PH
Yeah, I think so. Like if I were the devil, I would probably want to go after some of these very root issues, like mess up marriage…
LH
Or men and women…
PH
Mess up gender, mess up the family, which is all taught in Genesis 1, 2, and 3. Mess any of those up, and you're messing up a lot of society for a long period of time, and messing up in the sense of drawing them away from following Jesus Christ to following the work of the devil.
LH
Yeah. Now you mentioned all those issues, and we can kind of all see that. Yeah, those are obviously foundational issues. It makes sense that if you were to mess with the structure of that, you were going to have negative consequences, simple consequences, and that's not going to go well, but if I think about our context today and the issue of Sunday or the Sabbath, I think a lot of people, even like in our reformed circles, would see that as, yeah, that might be important or that that might be a historical tradition of how we kind of act on the Sunday, but maybe that doesn't seem as foundational or as important as you know, men are men, women are women, the importance of the family and the importance of marriage. Like those are a lot easier to rally people around and defend those basic foundational truths. But I do think the Sunday and how we treat the Sabbath or the Sunday is less well thought of or less seems less important in our current cultural lens. And I kind of wonder why that is maybe, and do you think that's because people don't understand its rootedness in creation? Maybe kind of take us through that point a little bit of like how do you how do you believe that the Bible shows us that this is rooted in creation rather than something that was just more of an Old Testament command?
PH
So to answer your basic question, I do think yes. A part of the problem, big part of the problem, is that many folks do not relate the Lord's Day or Sunday observance or Sabbath observance to creation. I think that's a fundamental disconnect. They just they just haven't seen that connection, or they haven't thought about it. If they think about Sunday in terms of any kind of Old Testament connection, then they think of the Sabbath as we have it in the Laws of Moses, and then there are a lot of people who think that the Sabbath was a Jewish thing, just invented or not invented, but given by God at Mount Sinai, and incorporated into the 10 Commandments, yes, but actually, it's all just temporary shadows. And when Jesus Christ came and died and rose from the dead, all those shadows are gone. That we don't have to honor them or obey them anymore. They're not to be. In fact, they should not be used. Some people are quite strong that way, and so you have outside of the Reformed and Presbyterian churches, most I'll just say many Protestant folks are not teaching that the Sunday is a binding day of rest. They don't see it rooted in creation. Historically, the Reformed and Presbyterian have, but even there, there's been a weakening in certain circles about the value of the Lord's Day, Sunday, as a creation ordinance, and not everybody is like I like I said, that's where the breakdown is. They're not seeing the connect, and therefore they're not seeing the always the importance of having a day set apart, one day in seven, to worship God and to rest from your labor. So, yeah, we can go into Genesis 1 a little bit…
LH
Yeah sure, yeah. How clear is it then in Genesis 1? Because it does seem like if you look at the landscape of Christianity today, that you know there are people of sincere faith, even sincere reformed faith, as you mentioned, who would differ on how the principles of the Sabbath or the Sunday play out today. So maybe walk us through a little bit, I guess, how you see it rooted in creation there in Genesis.
PH
Yes. So I'm just going to get my Bible.
LH
Yeah, for sure.
PH
In Genesis, it's actually the beginning of Genesis 2 is where we have the reference to the day of rest. I think some of the problem comes in where in the fact that the name Sabbath or the word Sabbath does not occur in Genesis 2, it occurs for the first time in the book of Exodus, right? First Exodus 16, and then later in the 10 Commandments, but here in Genesis 1, the Lord says, "Thus the heavens, sorry, this is Genesis 2:1. Thus the heavens and the earth were finished, and all the host of them. 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. So, is this the Sabbath day that later is incorporated into the 10 Commandments? That's sort of the fundamental issue. There are people, scholars, who say no, this is not the Sabbath day because the word Sabbath doesn't occur, and it's something other. But I think if you look at those two verses, and think about what's being said there, it's not hard to see that the seventh day is made something special from all the other days of the week, this is actually the crowning work of God's creation. For six days, He creates, and then we have this announcement that His creation, His creating work, is finished. And God could have, if you just pause over that for a moment, God could have just left…
LH
Why does God need to rest?
PH
And He doesn't, right? We know that. So God could have left the week at six days. We could have just had a six-day work week and just one day after the other, we just work, work, work because we had already had the charge in Genesis 1 that we are to be fruitful and multiply, we are to subdue the earth, we are to exercise dominion over the animals, etc. But all of a sudden, after everything's created, we get this special designation, the creation of another day, and it's a day that about some things are some marvelous things are said. God blessed the seventh day, didn't bless any of the other six days, so that already marks it as something special. He made it holy. So please note that we're before the fall into sin.
LH
Yeah.
PH
Right? Something is called holy before the fall into sin. Something is set apart from all everything else before there's sin in the world, because “on it God rested from all His work”, His creating work. God was obviously still active on the Lord's day. We know that from John's Gospel. The Lord Jesus says in response to the Pharisees who accuse him of breaking the Sabbath. He says in John 5, "My Father is working until now, and so am I.”
LH
Yeah.
PH
So God's work of providence, God's work of caring for the world. If God didn't uphold the world every moment, it would literally fall apart. So God is always working, but God was not creating. So something special is going on here, and who is to keep the day holy if it is not the creature made in God's image? Right? I mean that's the implication. Day six, man's created. He's created special, made in the image of God, and then on the next day, day seven, God makes a day, makes it holy, because God rested from His work. Now, when you go to the fourth commandment, you tell me if we're not talking about the same day. When you read the fourth commandment in Exodus 20, “Remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy. Six days you shall labor and do all your work.” Notice that word. “But the seventh day is a Sabbath to the Lord your God. On it you shall not do any work, you or your son or your daughter, your male servant or your female servant or your livestock or the sojourner who is within your gates. For..” – here it comes – “in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea and all that is in them, and rested on the seventh day.” That’s exactly Genesis two. “Therefore, the Lord blessed the Sabbath day.” Now he gives it the name. So he has a very tight link between the seventh day and the Sabbath day, and then it finishes off, “and made it holy.” So right there in Exodus 20, fourth commandment, God Himself links the Sabbath day to the seventh day of creation, and in Genesis 2, you have the same things marked out there. It's a day of rest because God rested.
LH
Yep.
PH
It's a day to set aside our work because God set aside His work.
LH
Yep.
PH
So we are to imitate God, and if you think about the context of the, you know, going to the 10 Commandments for a moment, 10 Commandments are a summary of God's moral law. He etched them in stone. He put them inside the ark. He repeated them a second time, right in Deuteronomy 5, and we'll get to the Deuteronomy 5 difference, I'm sure. But so these are etched in stone. Why did God etch them in stone to indicate symbolically that these are His permanent will for God's people?
LH
Yep.
PH
Permanent will includes a day of rest, the Sabbath day. And if you think about the first four commandments, it makes perfect sense, right? First commandment: whom we are to worship, only worship God. Second commandment: How we are to worship, worship God according to my instructions, my word. Third commandment: Don't take the Lord's name in vain, which is another way of saying worship me with the right attitude. So it's all about worship. One, two, and three. Now we get to day four, or sorry, the fourth commandment, and it's about worship again. The time is commanded.
LH
Yeah, when...
PH
When to worship.
LH
Yeah.
PH
That corporate element of worship is to happen on the Lord's. Sorry, on the Sabbath day. I mean, if you think about the Lord of heaven and earth commanding His people to worship Him, he also must command the time. He must give them a day to worship. Otherwise, when would they do one, two, and three? When would they come and worship God? When would they come and worship according to His word? When would they come and worship Him with that appropriate attitude? Well, it has to be that the Lord gives a day. So this ties back to Genesis 2 very clearly, and I think it's I think it is biblical to say the Sabbath was established at creation. There is a day of rest from creation, and I want to just hook in here for a moment to Hebrews 4 because in Hebrews 4 there's reference made there to the eternal rest that's still coming, and Hebrews 4, let me just get the wording here, because sometimes we're wondering about what actually is said there and what this means. So the writer of Hebrews is making the point that there is a future day or time coming, he says. So then, this is verse nine, there remains a Sabbath rest for the people of God. For whoever has entered God's rest has also rested from his works, as he did from us. Let us therefore strive to enter that rest. So there's something future, right? What's he talking about there? That Sabbath rest that he's talking about is the new heavens and the new earth, where we will be fully at rest from our sin, where we will all the striving of this life that that is on account of sin and all the consequence of sin that will be behind us, and we will enter God's full rest. That doesn't mean inactivity. I think God's got other activity waiting for us, which He hasn't elaborated on yet. But there's a future rest coming, which I think is indicated in Genesis 2. If you just sort of pause for a moment and think, okay, well, why would why did God give a day of rest in a sinless world? This is before sin, right?
LH
Good question.
PH
So six days of work, seventh day was to be holy. Work was not onerous. Work was not slavish or difficult. Work would have been itself a joy. But God is saying there's more to life than the work I give you to do. There's a goal. You're working and then you rest. You you're working and then you rest, and your work, of course, will accumulate and it will build up. I mean, had we never fallen into sin, we would have presumably, under God's blessing, worked toward the goal that he had. Now he doesn't say it in so many words, but I think the implication is we would have worked toward that ultimate Sabbath rest, not Sabbath rest from sin because there was no sin, but Sabbath rest from the completion of whatever work we were given by God to do in this earth. So I think Genesis 2 is pointing in that direction, it doesn't lay it out in so many words, but Hebrews 4 picks up on that, and so the daily Sabbath, sorry, the weekly Sabbath day, the weekly day of rest, points forward to the great eternal Sabbath that God has in store for us. This is all outside of the shadows of the Mosaic Law. That's what I want to make a connection to.
LH
Yep, which is interesting too, because like, because it's for sin, the purpose of the rest is just it's purely just to worship and remind ourselves that we are here to glorify God as the chief purpose of man.
PH
You're Adam and Eve, you've been created on day six, the first day of your existence is this day. This holy day that God has declared holy. What are you going to do with that day? Of course, you're going to just spend it with your Creator. Yep, you're going to be in his company. You're going to fellowship with him. You're going to worship him. However, that looked like before the fall. We don't know exactly, but it certainly looked like fellowship. It certainly looked like being in the company of God. We know from Genesis 3:8 that the Lord would come into the garden in the cool of the day, and He would walk with His people. They recognize the sound of him coming into the garden. So this was a regular thing. That's a hint that in Genesis two, on the seventh day, God was with his people.
LH
Communes with his people.
PH
And isn't that the beauty of life? Isn't that why we're working? Doesn't that give meaning to labor?
LH
Yeah, indeed. So then, what would be the steel man or the strongest case for those who would say, "Well, yes, there is a day of rest, but that day of rest is not the Sabbath because is it only because the word is not used? Because the literal is it a translation debate, or is there more? What are the strongest points on the other side of things? Because obviously, if you can't make that connection, if that connection isn't as strong as you say, then there are a lot of other different consequences that follow from that presupposition.
PH
Yeah. So the strongest argument I've seen is that indeed the word Sabbath doesn't appear in Genesis 2. But like I mentioned, I don't find that a strong argument, really, because the word rest appears. The word "work" appears, and those two words, they appear frequently in those three verses I read, they reappear in the fourth commandment, Exodus 20, where God links the seventh day with the Sabbath day. So, to me, I don't understand how folks who say, "Well, the Sabbath day isn't there, Sabbath day is not mentioned that you can't call that the Sabbath.” I say, “well, look, you can you can call something by a different name and it's still that thing.” Later in Genesis two, Adam is given a partner. Eve, right? He's created alone, but later he's given a partner, a woman. The woman is brought to the man, and we read there at the end of chapter 2, “Therefore, a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh.” Now, does anybody doubt that he's referring to marriage? The word marriage is not there. The word wedding is not there, but the description of marriage is there. Same with Genesis 1, 2, and 3. Yep. So again, I just think the argument falls flat that oh the word Sabbath is not there then therefore it's not the Sabbath day.
LH
Yeah, and there's so many like you say the work and the rest. There's so many direct parallels that it makes sense that it would be the same thing that's being talked about there, and then also the permanence of the 10 Commandments and how those apply still to us today. Like no one, no one really debates the other nine. So there's just a straight continuity argument to be had there as well. Yeah. And those 10 Commandments were also applicable at the start of the world too. Like that was God's law, so it was true in creation, it was true at Sinai, and those are still true today. So just that's what always that's one of the things that gets me of just the continuity of it. It doesn't make a lot of sense if you yank out the fourth commandment.
PH
Right, I think that's a that's a very strong argument there. The other argument I can I have heard about why people don't think that why they think the Sabbath began at Mount Sinai is they say, well, we don't read about it in all of the rest of Genesis. So even if you just leave aside Genesis 2, there's no reference to the Sabbath day after Genesis being
LH
Being practiced amongst Abram.
PH
There’s no reference to it. And to that argument, I would say, well, you always have to be very careful with an argument from silence because you can't say one way or the other definitively was it there, was it not there, based on what you don't hear. Second to that, there are a number of times in the book of Genesis where a sequence of seven are important for the for the storyline. One of those, for example, is during the flood story. Seven days they were waiting in the in the ark before the rains fell. There's a I can't think of the others off the top of my head, but the number seven and the period of seven days without referencing the Sabbath, it's true. It's there. It's there in the background as a kind of an understood thing. The week is seven days, and the period is seven days is a is an important thing. And one more counter argument is in Exodus 16. So that's before they get to Mount Sinai. The Israelites are in the desert. Exodus 16, and the Lord gives them manna to feed them because they're running out of they don't have food in the desert, and then the Lord gives an instruction, but just kind of kind of comes out of the blue. I will give you.. you're not to go out and collect manna on the Sabbath.
LH
I'll give you twice as much.
PH
Right, the day before, I give you twice as much, but he just sort of drops the Sabbath name in the middle of their travels, as if they knew what it was. Like remember the Sabbath, and everyone's like, "Oh yeah, we get that.” So the implication is the Israelites, Moses, and the Israelites knew about this thing called the Sabbath. It came into a formal regulation in the 10 Commandments, but just like they knew the other commandments, they must have known that it was not right to kill. They must have known it was not right to steal. They must have known it was not right to dishonor authority. That, but the Lord articulated that in a formal covenant and put that in stone in order for them to have clarity about His will, and they could always refer to it. It's not as if these things are for the first time occurring at Mount Sinai.
LH
Got it. So now in Deuteronomy, when the law is repeated again, it's more so rooted in the redemption from Egypt. Now, why the change in focus there, and what implications does that have for the fourth commandment in this context,
PH
So indeed in Deuteronomy 5, it's the only commandment that gets two reasons when you compare the 10 Commandments in Exodus 20 and the 10 in Deuteronomy 5, the fourth commandment is the only one that's given a different reason the second time round, and let me just read that reason for you. Six days you shall labor 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, you or your son or your daughter or your male servant or your female servant, your ox or your donkey or any of your livestock or the sojourner who is within your gate, that your male servant and your female servant may rest as well as you. You shall remember that you were slaves in the land of Egypt, and that 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.” So the reason given here has to do with their redemption from Egypt, Exodus 20. Remember creation. Deuteronomy 5. Remember your recreation, where God saved you from slavery to sin, or sorry, slavery to Pharaoh. And both of these are precursors to what the Lord Jesus would do for us. Now, before I get to the Lord Jesus, let me just back up a moment to Leviticus 25, if I if I may, because there's a tie-in between Leviticus 25 and Deuteronomy 5 with respect to Sabbath. In Leviticus 25, you have the Lord commanding His people to have a, not a Sabbath day, but a Sabbath year. Every seventh year, they were to let the land lie fallow, and the land was to have rest for a whole year. And God would so bless them in the sixth year that the seventh year would they could eat off the food from the sixth year, and they could they could have a whole year of rest from their labor. I mean, think about that. That's truly where the word sabbatical comes from-a whole year off of your labor. So that was actually a beautiful gift for the people. And then in that Exodus, Leviticus 25, the Lord goes on to speak about the year of jubilee. So after seven time, the seventh sabbatical year, or the Sabbath year, so that'd be the 49th year. That would be a regular Sabbath year. They were to have a special year of rest, the 50th year, which God called the Jubilee, announced by the blowing of the horn, the ram's horn on the Day of Atonement. What was special about this day? Well, again, they were to have a, they were not to work; they were to live off the produce of the land from now two seasons earlier, the 48th year, and the people were to be set free from slavery if they had been enslaved to one another, and if they had had to sell their land. Because when they got into the land of Canaan, everyone had a parcel of land. Every family had their own property. Well, in the year of Jubilee, they were given their land back. This is called the Sabbath year, like it's the Sabbath of Sabbaths.
LH
Yep.
PH
Okay? So the Sabbath year, you have to remember, like before we even get to the to the New Testament, in the Old Testament context. Before we get to the Pharisees or anything else, the Sabbath was a blessing. Like for Adam and Eve, blessing even in a sinless world, they could they were communing with their God. What more fuller joy could they have than to make that day holy and walk with their God? Right. So it's a good thing, the Sabbath. Then, after the fall into sin, we believe it's still there in Genesis. It's not talked about in Genesis, but it's there in the background. We don't exactly know how it functioned in Abraham's life. We have to admit that, but certainly it comes to the surface in the laws of Moses. And let me add that when God gives it to the people of Israel, certainly, He adds significance to it. Okay, like shadows that do point to Christ, and that when Christ arrives, the shadow element of the Sabbath falls away. We'll talk about that in a moment. But I just want to emphasize that the celebration of the Sabbath was indeed a joyful thing. It was a celebration. Like every seventh day, they got to rest from their labors. Every seventh day they could put down their back-breaking work. Every seventh day they could go to the tabernacle and have a holy consecration. Says Leviticus 23. There would be a meeting at the at the tabernacle, and they were to remember their freedom. That's the fourth commandment in Deuteronomy 5, and the Jubilee really highlights that God sets His people free from enslavement to Pharaoh, to any oppressive enemy, and now when you fast forward to what the Lord Jesus did, He sets us free from Satan, from sin, from the wages of sin, death. So it makes perfect sense that the Lord Jesus love would love the Sabbath day, and if you look at what He does in the Gospels, Luke 4 says it was his custom to go to the synagogue. What was he doing every Sabbath? He was worshiping. He was with God's people. Didn't go off to a mountain somewhere. He went to God's people in the synagogue. Opened the scroll.
LH
Yep.
PH
If when he was younger, he would have listened to the rabbi preaching the gospel. When he became a rabbi himself, he taught and he preached the gospel, and he explained the wonderful things that God has done for His people to the people, and they spent time in each other's company, no doubt singing God's praises as well. So, these two elements, these two reasons that are tucked away in the in the two renditions of the fourth commandment, we are always to remember what God did for us in creating us, and how that original creation setup was already meant for us to be in fellowship with Him on the Sabbath. And even all those six days are meant to be… we work for the Lord, and we may certainly have fellowship with him day by day, but the Sabbath day seventh is a special thing. And then in Deuteronomy we are told to remember, after the fall into sin, remember how the Lord has set you free. He's reestablished you in that relationship with Himself, and He gives you the day of rest to enjoy it, to practice it to have that that beautiful freedom a foretaste of it.
LH
Yep. So then that rest and that freedom though, like I think you make very strong case that okay it's rooted in creation. We see it again the law. This is a continuation of this command, and not only just this command, but this gift that God gives us, both before the fall into sin and still after, that much more even maybe after the fall into sin that we need that rest, need that time to commune together in worship of God. But then, what does this mean in terms of the rest in the practice in the New Testament era, right? Like because Jesus obviously spends a lot of time dialoguing with the Pharisees in his ministry, and a substantial portion of that, there are clear passages dealing with the Sabbath or the Sunday in our case, I guess. So, what does it signify that he was very clear and direct with the Pharisees in pushing back against their legalism? What can we kind of learn from that, and what does he mean when he says the Sabbath was made for man? Because I think that's a very critical one that can get perhaps misunderstood today. Because it's I think it's very easy to take that kind of teaching and go, “whoa, I'll just I'll rest, I'll do what my heart desires.” Because of all the litany of cultural entertainment that we have today, and the kind of culture that we live in, where it's you can entertain yourself to death, literally, as Neil Postman says, right? So it's very easy to spend your weekends just doing that. So how do we carefully suss through that as Christians to know this is what good rest looks like? This is what living in accordance with the fourth commandment today looks like, and how can we be on guard against legalism in the one ditch, but also complete you know chaos or perhaps do what you wantism serving yourself on the other side.
PH
Yeah, well let's maybe talk about what the Lord Jesus meant when He said, "The Son of Man is Lord of the Sabbath, and the Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath. So the first part of that quote, "The Son of Man is Lord of the Sabbath.” Well, the Lord Jesus is claiming divine authority with those words. He is saying, "son of man” is an expression that comes out of Daniel 7, which there's a figure in Daniel 7 that appears before the Ancient of Days, who would be then Yahweh. So to put it in terms of the persons of the Trinity, it's God the Son approaching God the Father, and He is given all authority. That's the vision in Daniel 7. So the Son of Man is a as a title for the Messiah, who has been given all authority, and not just all human authority, but actually divine authority. So when He says the Son of Man is Lord of the Sabbath, He's staking out the ground to the Pharisees that this is my day, and he actually had the right to say, "I was there in the beginning when this day was created, and this is my day, and I get to say what's the right thing to do on it, yes or no.” So the Lord Jesus lays that out. That's what that claim is all about. And then He says the sun, the Sabbath was made for man. Well, that actually takes us back to creation, right?
LH
It’s that gift idea.
PH
Yeah, and but He doesn't say. Notice He doesn't say the Sabbath was made for Israel. He doesn't say the Sabbath was made for the Jews. He doesn't say the Sabbath was made for God's people. He says the Sabbath was made for man. That's a very general word for mankind, for humanity,
LH
Broad
PH
Connects right with Genesis too. Those verses we read earlier.
LH
Yep.
PH
So actually, I think the Lord Jesus is supporting what we've been saying all the way along that the Sabbath is a gift from God. Indeed, now made for man, for man's benefit. The Pharisees had this turned around. The Pharisees were so locked in to obeying the commandments of the law for fear that transgressing those commandments would bring God's wrath down upon Israel. The Pharisees were born out of almost an overreaction to what happened at the exile, you go back to the exile to Babylon. The prophets mention that a big reason that why God removed Israel from their own land and sent them off to Babylon was because they did not give the land their rests, the Sabbath rests every seven years and so one of the things the Pharisees, when they were a party that kind of rose to prominence after the return from exile, and they rose to prominence on this idea that we have to keep the law. We have to keep the law because otherwise God's going to do this again.
LH
Yep.
PH
And one of the big things they became known for was Sabbath keeping because they read in the book of Kings and in the prophets, other prophets that the Sabbath…
LH
was disregarded.
PH
Yeah, the desecration of the Sabbath was what brought God's anger. So they actually put what they call a hedge around the law. They made something like 613 additional little laws for how the people were to protect the Sabbath and honor and honor the Sabbath and not disobey the Sabbath. They were always concerned with not disobeying the law. So, but they went so far with it that they actually undermined the very intent of the law. Like God's law has a purpose; it has an intention. There's a rationale behind it. That's the that's true in human laws generally, and you cannot just take a given law and say, "Well, I'm going to obey that law just exactly according to the wording, and then ignore what the intention was in that law. You will very soon find yourself doing something that actually runs contrary to the very thing that was intended, and that's actually what the Pharisees were doing. So they took the creation Sabbath and then the Sabbath that God gave at Mount Sinai with it, and God did give some additional commands there, but they added so many commands they made it an oppressive day, right? Like they said you couldn't you know, they accused Jesus' disciples of when they would take a stock of grain from the field and just do this in their with their fingers they said that was working that was harvesting. Well that's just a joke right and the Lord nowhere in the laws of Moses condemned the plucking of heads of grain, so that you can eat on the Sabbath. The Lord nowhere in the laws of Moses condemned the healing of a blind man or the healing of a lame man, like the Lord Jesus did a couple times on the Sabbath. That was never condemned, but they considered all that to be work. So they actually, with their accumulation of laws, they turned the day upside down, and they made they made it so that the Israelite was made for the Sabbath, instead of the Sabbath was made for all of mankind, creation, right? So Jesus is actually straightening out this great error. He's not saying, "Oh, do what you want on the on the Sabbath or the day of rest. He's not saying that at all. He’s just saying the Sabbath was made for man for man's good. Well, what is man's good? You go back to Genesis 2. Man's good. It's his highest joy is to spend quality time with his Maker. That's what that's what making the day holy is about is not going off golfing, is not going off down to the beach and hanging with your friends and just doing whatever you want. And God's far from your thoughts. No, this day is about spending it with the Lord. And I'm not saying that you can't do that at the beach, like in some measure. I'm not saying you know going to the beach is an evil thing in the evening or something like that. But I'm just saying, the mindset has to be: this day is for me, is given to me by God, for my good. What is my highest good? It's to be in the Lord's company. It's to give my heart to the Lord. It's to fellowship with my God. What higher good can there be?
LH
Yep.
PH
So he's articulating the core principle of the Sabbath-it's actually the core principle of life.
LH
Yeah.
PH
So, yeah, that was - I think that answers part of your question. Maybe you can refresh me on what the other part was.
LH
Yeah, I did ask you a long one there. Well, maybe just kind of building off what you had just mentioned there. So obviously, he repeatedly challenges the Pharisees on their Sabbath laws and the overbearing nature of the 613, as you mentioned, and so we know that Sabbath is a good gift given for man. It was made for man. It reminds us that we exist to commune with God, to worship God, to glorify Him, to live with Him, and that we long for that eternal rest. So I'm tracking with all of that still. But what does it mean to fulfill the Sabbath rather than to abolish it? Because like Christ didn't abolish the Sabbath, but He fulfills it. But how do we kind of define those two terms? And I guess we're kind of leading into like what is this? We'll get into the whole Sunday conversation, the shift over from Sabbath to Sunday. But what does it mean to fulfill the Sabbath, and how does that take us kind of into that the Sunday conversation maybe.
PH
Yeah, the concept of fulfill or the word the verb to fulfill is a bit tricky because it depends on the context in which it's used, or whether it ends up meaning something is abolished or something is in continual use. So we know, for example, that the Lord Jesus Christ came to fulfill all the law. He says that very plainly in Matthew 5:17, “I did not come to abolish the law. I came to fulfill it.” Okay, what does that mean? Well, let's just think of some other commands. Very clear commands. Did the Lord Jesus fulfill the eighth commandment, "You shall not steal." Did He fulfill that? Sure, He did. He lived it to its fullest extent. He didn't steal from anybody. He always was kind-hearted toward those in need. He did what he could for those in need.
LH
Generous, yep.
PH
Right. He fulfilled it. Does that mean it's abolished?
LH
No.
PH
No. I think everybody would agree. There's no doubt about that. And you could do the same for the ninth commandment about not bearing false witness, and the seventh commandment about sexual purity, and the sixth commandment about not killing, and the fifth commandment about honoring authority, and the third commandment about not taking the Lord's name in vain. Like you can do it for all the nine, and everybody would say, "Yeah, no, they have ongoing significance, they're still binding on all of us. We all of us must not steal. All of us must not commit adultery. All of us must honor those in authority. But somehow, with the fourth commandment, it's like, oh, that that's a big question mark for people. And I think there's been an over reading of the fourth commandment to say, oh, that's just all shadow. That's just. That's just all temporary. See, they don't root it in creation. They don't see it as part of God's permanent law. They see it only as a temporary thing. And that's where I believe the a big mistake is made and they, yeah, folks who see it that way will quickly then say, well, the fourth commandment is yeah, it's finished because the all the Sabbaths are gone. Paul doesn't Paul say in Colossians that you know those who esteem a new moon or a Sabbath or a feast or a feast or whatever I forget exactly how he puts it, but you know those things are those things have I forget exactly how he how he says it there, but he kind of dismisses them like they're no longer in force.
LH
It’s not needed. You could do that, but it's not a requirement. That sort of mindset. But then what about the Sermon on the Mount, though? Because that's the situation..
PH
Indeed. So here's where we have to distinguish between, in the laws of Moses, there are there are moral laws that are permanent, 10 Commandments. There are civil laws that apply to the state of Israel, that apply to the state of Israel as a governing as a governed nation.
LH
Sure.
PH
So long as that nation existed, basically that came to an end in AD 70.
LH
Yeah.
PH
Then there's ceremonial laws that pertain to the worship of Israel. Everything related to the tabernacle. Everything related to the temple, all the sacrifices. Well, we know from Christ's own mouth and from the book of Hebrews and the teaching of the apostles, that all those ceremonies they came to an end. They were abolished. Why were they abolished?
LH
Because Christ's sacrifice is sufficient.
PH
Right. Because they were they were set in place, not ever as permanent, the permanent moral law of God. They were set in place as a temporary teaching tools to teach the people of God about the need for the greater Messiah or the great Messiah who was to come. So they were always meant as temporary, and we the temple is no more because Christ came and He was the temple in in human flesh, and the temple today is his body on earth, the church. All the sacrifices came to a halt because he is the ultimate final sacrifice. All the laws of clean and unclean came to a halt because he brought an end to the division between Jew and Gentile. All these things are very clearly taught in the New Testament, and nobody disputes them. But the fourth commandment is sometimes lumped in with them because people say, "Oh, that's part of those shadows”, but then they get that's where the confusion comes in. They're not part of the. It's not part of the shadows.
LH
It’s not ceremonial.
PH
Right. It's not ceremonial. There's an element, and this is another layer of the confusion inside of the 10 Commandments. There are elements which are temporal. Let's say we'll just use a different word, temporal. So, a clear example is the fifth commandment, where the Lord says, you know, that He gives a promise: if we honor our father and mother, then our days will be long in the land that the Lord your God is giving you. Well, that's a reference to the land of Canaan. When we hear that today, we are not to think of the land of Canaan as our land. What are we to think of? We are to think of what the land of Canaan pointed to, because it was a pointer to the great new earth and new heavens that are coming. So we have to do a little mental translation. When we hear that, right? Because that's not our, we're not in that time frame anymore. Still valid, the fifth commandment, still God's moral law for us to honor those in authority. But there's the permanent moral element, honor authority. The temporal element, the land of Canaan. With the fourth commandment, the permanent element is one day of rest out of every seven, six days you shall work, one day you shall rest. The temporal element is the seventh day. We know that because of what the Lord Jesus, who's the Lord of the Sabbath, what He did in His resurrection and how He basically taught His disciples to honor Him by worshiping him on the Lord's Day, what the New Testament calls the Lord's Day on that new on the first day. So the fourth commandment is a moral thing. The day of rest is a moral thing. It's not a temporal thing. We, the people of God, if you just look at it practically, the people of God still need a day on which to worship. If we didn't have a command to worship on Sunday, what would the church, how would we ever get our church services together?
LH
Be a scheduling nightmare.
PH
It'd be, it'd be crazy.
LH
Yeah.
PH
So, yeah. So, so, so the fourth commandment, you know. Rooted in creation, part of the 10, written on stone, these are the core elements of why Reformed and Presbyterian churches, and not just them, but those are the ones that we're most familiar with, have always regarded them, the fourth commandment, as a permanent thing. It's God's permanent will to have one day in seven, and now and in the new covenant era, the first day of the week, to rest and to worship.
LH
That makes sense. What are some examples of maybe other commandments where like there's a temporal element to it that falls away, but like the base portion of it is still applicable today. Like, would it be like if you think about like the do not kill, like the part that would fall away would be the specific punishments for manslaughter or straight up like full cold blooded first degree murder, like in the in the nation of Israel at that time. Is that how that would kind of split out, or…
PH
So. yeah, I mean, the way that the civil laws of Israel worked, they worked out the 10 Commandments in all kinds of practical ways, right? And if you disobey, then there was these penalties. So the penalties were indeed temporal for the nation of Israel under that governing system, and we can still learn from them, by the way, we can learn principles, but we are no longer obligated by God to put into practice like our civil governments today are no longer obligated by God to orchestrate or conduct the civil affairs in exactly the same manner that Israel did, led by God in the desert. Maybe another temporal element within the 10 Commandments proper might be reference to in the 10th Commandment to you know coveting a neighbor's field or ox or donkey. Most of us aren't having oxes and donkeys around. I mean, that was really, I mean, some of us might have oxes and donkeys, I suppose, but those are just examples of things that belong to your neighbor that are valuable that that could be then envied by another neighbor.
LH
Be like your truck and your tractor today.
PH
So there’s another example of that mental translation. Like the 10 Commandments are every bit as valid today as they ever were, but we do have to make some mental translations when we hear them, and that's why we have preaching on that. Explain the 10 Commandments and go through this once in a while. That's why we explain it to our kids.
LH
So back to the Sermon on the Mount, though that's I believe the only commandment that's not mentioned there explicitly. So, what about this idea of like, well, Jesus didn't say it explicitly, but he did say the other ones. They're all kind of weaved in there.
PH
Yeah, sometimes yes, and elsewhere in the New Testament. So, the Sermon on the Mount doesn't have all the 10 Commandments weaved in. It's got a number of them, but not all of them. But elsewhere in the New Testament, you can pretty well find all of them rearticulated in so many words, but not the fourth commandment, and that has led people to say, "Oh, see, the fourth commandment's just temporal.”
LH
That is odd. That's kind of an irregularity.
PH
It is odd, but it's odd only in the sense if you're if you think that's what's needed, what that that somehow you know, without that we're sunk. We don't have anything a leg to stand on. We do have a lot of legs to stand on. Number one, there's no word in the New Testament that the day of rest is gone. There's no word of abrogation in the New Testament that we no longer have to be worried about any single day of the week as a day on which to worship.
LH
The Colossians text doesn't apply there?
PH
The Colossians text, and you might as well say Romans 14, those are referring to the system of ceremonies inside the laws of Moses. So inside the laws of Moses, you've got yes Sabbaths, all kinds of Sabbaths, not just the one every seven days, but you've got ones that are associated with the beginning of certain festivals and feasts so they would have a number of extra Sabbaths in in the course of a year as they began and ended certain feasts. Every new moon there was a there was a special ceremony, and I think there was also rest associated with every new moon. These are gone. That was all part of the system.
LH
Day of Jubilee, all that.
PH
The year of jubilee.
LH
Oh sorry, Year of Jubilee.
PH
And the Sabbath year, all gone because they are all they all belong to the mosaic law. That's very clear. All those are things are gone. But as I said earlier, that doesn't take away from the original seventh day of rest, like that one in seven, one in seven from Genesis 2. So the confusion sometimes is indeed that that people only think of the laws of Moses. If the Sabbath originated at Mount Sinai, then yes, it's gone. Then, then they're right. There is no special day. But if the Sabbath originated at creation, it's still with us, just like marriage is still with us, and the command to work and the command to have children. Those are creation mandates.
LH
Foundational.
PH
There’s been a change from the seventh day to the first day because Jesus is Lord of the Sabbath, and He rose from the dead on the first day of the week. And if you just think about that for a moment, doesn't that tie it all together? On the first day of the week, what's happening in Jesus' resurrection? He is the first fruits of the new creation. Right? He rises with what? His glorified body. He's the only one. Even as we speak, he's the only one that has a glorified body. Elijah doesn't have a glorified body. The saints who died…
LH
Moses
PH
…don't have glorified bodies. They're all waiting for their glorified body in heaven. Their souls waiting. But the Lord Jesus has a glorified body, a body that's filled with the spirit of God, a spiritual body, as Paul says in one Corinthians 15. We're going to get a body like that, but we're still waiting. So he's the first fruits of the new creation. Well, that ties in with Exodus 20. Remember creation. What else does Jesus' resurrection do it seals the forgiveness of our sins, right? Christ's death paid for all of our sins. 1 Corinthians 15, Paul says, yes, the crucifixion is critically important, but if Jesus didn't rise from the dead, you're still in your sins.
LH
Yeah.
PH
So the resurrection is of one piece; it completes the payment.
LH
If flips the whole thing on its head too, because it's just like the rest comes first, then the work, versus the work and then the rest in the Old Testament too.
PH
Right. So when Jesus rises from the dead, then the payment is confirmed, the victory is confirmed. That's why Resurrection Day, Easter, is such a joyful day because had Jesus not come forth from the tomb, everything else would have been for naught. Right. So the resurrection Easter Sunday is a fulfillment of the Exodus from Egypt. Easter Sunday is what Deuteronomy 5, the fourth commandment in Deuteronomy 5 is talking about. Remember that you were slaves in Egypt. Remember that you were slaves to sin. Remember that you were under the tyranny of the devil and how the Lord Jesus set you free.
LH
You were slaves. Now everything hinges on the resurrection. It flips, and you've been set free. Therefore, go live lives of thankfulness.
PH
Right
LH
In the you know following six days,
PH
exactly. And then we get every seventh days. You on the first day of the week, the people of God are gathering to worship. That that that pattern starts to emerge in the Gospels. Every one of the Gospels mentions Jesus rose on the first day of the week. The disciples were gathered on that day. Jesus met them on that day. They worshiped him on that day. A week later in John's Gospel, exactly a week later, like the next Sunday, they were gathered again. Jesus appears to them again. He shows himself to Thomas. In the Book of Acts we see the same pattern appearing. They met on the first day of the week. 1 Corinthians 16, Paul says, when you meet on the first day of the week have a collection and set aside some money so that when I come I don't have to have a special collection at that time. Do that, by the way, in Corinth and in the churches of Galatia.
LH
Yeah, so broadly applies.
PH
This was a common thing. They were they were gathering on the first day of the week. So they didn't need a special command. They understood that when Jesus rose from the dead, it was a fulfillment of the Sabbath. But that didn't mean they stopped having one day out of seven to worship. They now recognize the resurrection day as oh this is the new holy day. This is the new special day on which we can commune with our Savior and our Lord. This is the day where it all comes together, and the church has recognized it ever since.
LH
And that's fairly undisputed, like across different denominations. Like that, the Catholics obviously would do that too, Protestants…
PH
The Lutherans, the Anglicans, the Baptists. Yep, everybody mostly, as far as I know, has the first day of the week. You know, I've got a I've got a reference somewhere in my notes about that, you know that this was the practice, you see it in the in the scriptures, in the New Testament scriptures, like I mentioned. But then in the early church history, it was a, they just pick they just carried on with that practice. So Eusebius in the fourth century mentions something like in in in all the churches everywhere, on the first day of the week, people gathered to sing the Lord's praises. He just makes a reference to that, like a it's a common pattern, you know. And throughout history, in the in the Middle Ages, the Roman Church they had something called lauds and vespers. Lauds was morning worship, break of day, and vespers was evening worship. And so this idea of morning and evening, morning and evening, was a common enough thing throughout history, and the Reformation Church basically continued. You know. First of all, with Sunday as the Lord's Day worship, and then they often they had two services. Even the Lutherans had two services in the early period of the Reformation. Later on, that they dropped it, it seems, but for the early period, they were quite happy to have a catechism sermon in the afternoon. I know we're getting into something else here now, but I’m just mentioning that this whole first day of the week thing, it's not just oh a recent invention that's been going on since the New Testament.
LH
Yep. Okay, so that's pretty clear. I think we've that that's you've established that well. So okay, we're sitting here on Sunday. There's a clear continuation from creation through the laws of Moses and then into the fulfillment that translates into Sunday. Now we're in you know the Christ is come, He has risen, and we are in the New Testament regime, so to speak. How does that play out now practically? Like where does the rubber hit the road on some of these issues? So let's maybe shift gears in the back half year, and kind of get to some more of the practical or the nitty gritty, the Real Talk type questions or examples. So we put this out on social media too that we're going to be talking about the Sabbath and Sunday, and we did get quite a few submissions from listeners and stuff too. So there's a lot of interest, and I think a lot of people are working through this topic in their lives, both, I mean, obviously, just in the context of younger folks like myself establishing a family and establishing routines, and kind of seeing what you grew up with and what you're going to keep or change, whatever. But then also, just if we think about the how disruptive COVID was going back whatever it was six years now, and the rise of going to more online church and live stream as an option as well for people. So now there's more kind of considerations there and more options to weigh. So why don't we kind of wade into some of these waters? But I think for us in in a reformed context, many, most of our listeners probably grew up in a two service kind of context, going you know morning and afternoon, or morning and evening, and that's something that we're a lot of us are used to. Where does that practice come from? Is this a wise and godly practice on its own, but take it or leave it, or is this more of a command? Like, how did this kind of come about, and give us some guidance on that topic in particular?
PH
Well, I think if we go back to the fourth commandment, and even to Genesis 2, In both commands, there the Lord speaks about keeping the day holy to Him. So I think in all the practical discussions that we're about to have, we need to keep that in mind. Remember this this idea of keeping a day holy was before a fall into sin. So after the fall into sin, and even after being redeemed by Christ, we still can speak about a holy day. It's not. It's not off the table to speak about a holy day. The first day of the week is holy to the Lord. Let's keep the day holy. How do we do that? How do they do it in the Old Testament? We like to look to the Bible for examples. Well, in the Old Testament, there was sacrifices made at the altar, in the tabernacle, in the temple, every morning and every evening. That was every day of the week, but it was doubled on the Sabbath. So the priests were there first thing in the morning and first thing in the evening, and there would have been worshippers gathered around the gate or the entry to the tabernacle, praying and offering their devotion to the Lord as these things were done. We know that was common practice in the Old Testament. We have reference to morning and evening worship in Psalm 92, which is called a psalm for the Sabbath. Give praise to the Lord in the morning and in the evening, I believe it is. I'm just paraphrasing a bit there. So, if you bring that into the New Testament period, the first Christians were Jews, and then they were quickly joined by Gentiles. We have evidence from history that they worshiped also first thing in the morning and first thing in the evening, or last thing in the evening, I should say at sunset, sunrise and sunset. That was their practice in the early church, morning and evening worship. That that does a lot to help keep the day holy to the Lord. This idea that you worship in the morning and the rest of the day is for yourself, that's a problem. That's already moving away from the concept of this day is for the honor of the Lord and for my good. My good, my highest good is indeed to give my heart to the Lord, to be in the Lord's company, to think about the Lord, to fellowship with the Lord, to meditate upon the Lord, not to go off and do whatever I want, right? Isaiah, the prophet says, I believe it's chapter 58 - He also makes reference to this in chapter 56 - and the Lord through Isaiah says, "Call my Sabbath a delight. Do not do what you want on my on my day.” This is the attitude we should have. We should be looking for ways to make the day such that we can commune with our hearts with our God, and a public worship service in the morning and a public worship service either in the evening or in the latter part of the afternoon. The Lord doesn't specify hours.
LH
Fill out the day approach.
PH
Sort of almost like bookends to the day.
LH
Sure,
PH
That helps very much to keep our focus on the Lord. If we if we find ourselves resisting two worship services and thinking, “well, I don't need the second worship service,” we should ask ourselves, what's going on in my heart? Why don't I want to spend time worshiping God and hearing Him speak to us? Because He speaks to us in the preaching of the Word, right? The preaching of the Word is God speaking to us. This is one of the ordinary means of grace. He does it also in the sacraments, right? He speaks to us when the church is being gathered, when the church is being called by the Christ-appointed elders, we should, our heart should want to be there. This is the starting point for these discussions. We shouldn't be looking for well, what exactly are the parameters in Scripture? What are the do's and don'ts? That's where we get into the Pharisees, Pharisaical side of things. Remember the principle. This is a day holy to the Lord for our good, and our good is when we spend time with God. So, yeah, and all through church history, as I mentioned earlier, Eusebius mentions morning and evening, the Middle Ages, Lauds and Vespers, and then also the Reformed’s and the Anglican’s and the Presbyterian’s and the Lutheran’s all had a second service at some point in the latter part of the day, and that was common practice in the Reformation. We've gotten away from it last couple of centuries. A lot of the Protestant churches, but we are... It's not a good thing to get away from it. It's there's so many benefits to is.
LH
And then and then you layer in the additional like authority of the elders and them calling you to a second service and that whole side of things too. But you're kind of just speaking more towards like what is your heart posture towards the day, right?
PH
I think we have to start with that. Like at the at the end of the day, all of us need to be honest before God. Yep, like we're all going to stand before the Lord and ask, and He's have to give account for how we honored the fourth commandment. Did you consider my day holy? It's the Lord's Day, not the Lord's couple of hours in the morning. The Lord's Day. What did you do with my day? I gave you so many years of my day once every seven, what did you do with it? Well, if you think about that question, you think about the day of judgment. Let that let that inform how we answer, and not be glib, and not be you know posturing or not look for excuses. You're going to have to, I have to answer to the Lord. So do you. So does everybody. What are we doing on Lord's Day? Is it for me or for the Lord? Am I looking after my wants, or am I serving the Lord from the heart? Am I trying to get to know Him better? Am I trying to be in fellowship with His people better? You know.
LH
this one's a little off the wall, though it's kind of related to the heart posture side of things. What about thinking about it from like a sundown to sundown sort of approach, like because that was, I think that's how the Jews kind of deal with their Sabbath, even still today, where it's like whenever the sun goes down, to whenever goes down the next day.
So kind of a evening to evening approach.
PH
So I suppose I suppose there's freedom to do that. Like if you if you wanted to start your holy day, your day of rest on Saturday sundown, and concluded at Sunday sundown. I, I don't think anyone could say that's wrong. Our culture is such that we normally think in terms of midnight to midnight, in terms of when the day starts and ends. So, I would, but I would leave that into the freedom of a individual believers.
LH
Yeah. Okay. Interesting. I just think about that. Like it's if you're preparing for your work week or whatever too. Like my mind always tends to go there on a Sunday evening. Like okay, I'm getting up tomorrow. What am I doing on Monday? What's the day look like?
PH
Yeah.
LH
But so if you kind of like growing up, you were always big on that. Like preparing your heart or your mind for Sunday, right? So you're kind of trying to wind down on Saturday.
PH
Yeah. Well, another factor in all this too is as we're thinking about how to spend the Lord's Day in a way that's holy to the Lord and honoring to the Lord, we should think about our children. We should think about our neighbors, how we as adults act, and how we perform and do this the Sunday. People observe that our own children observe that. They will know whether we're the real deal or not. They will know whether this is this is just a dad or mom, you know, trying to get away with stuff and going to church. Yeah, but then after church, not really caring about the things of the Lord, they'll see that that's hypocrisy. They'll see that and they'll smell that, and it would be no surprise if they abandon the faith when they become adults. Also, our neighbors are looking upon us. Are we, what we do on the Lord's Day says a lot about who we worship. If we can't give the whole day to the Lord, if we're not serious about the Lord on this day. If we just go a couple of hours in the morning and then do our own thing in the afternoon, just like all of our worldly neighbors, they will understand who we really are for in this life. By contrast, if we are serious about the Lord's day, it can be a fantastic witness. I know I have a friend who, in university days, he was in architecture school, and he was hard pressed sometimes to meet deadlines for his assignments. And these architecture students, they would go 24/7 for periods of time to get their projects done. Well, he was, and they all had their studios in the same building, and so you were you know you were right beside your fellow students doing your architectural models and whatnot. Well, he would leave promptly at midnight on Saturday, and all of his fellow students were still there. They were going to go through the night because this thing was due Monday, and they had to get it done. And he would reappear Sunday at midnight, and he did this consistently, and you know, at first they were just like, "What are you doing? You're crazy!” But after a while, they respected him. They saw that he was serious about this. And you know what? His marks never suffered. The Lord blessed those efforts, and that's just a simple example of faithfulness in the little things. You know, he didn't do it to be noticed, but he was noticed.
LH
It's one of those things, and I think you see that a lot in Christian life, where like it, yeah, it doesn't make sense on the surface. Like think of a tithing in another like context, you could like oh you could take that money, you can invest it, you can make more money, then give it away later in life. But that's just not how the Lord works, and that's not what he calls us to do, ultimately.
PH
Right. It's very much like well, another example would be the giving of the first fruits. If you go back into the Israelites' history, you know the Lord was saying when you when you harvest your field, the very first portion of your harvest, bring that to the temple and give it to me, give it to the priests and give it to the personnel, the Levites, and even to the poor, don't eat it for yourself. You didn't have the rest of the crop in the barn, right? So you had to trust the Lord that He would give you the rest of the crop, that it would yet come in the barn, that there would be no storms that would flatten that crop because it was still in the field.
LH
Yeah.
PH
So the giving of the first fruits is an act of faith. You're trusting God to provide for you because you would very much like to have that first portion in your barn.
LH
Yeah, it feels safer, you know.
PH
But who you trusting?
LH
Who you trusting? Yeah.
PH
And it's the same with the seventh or the, sorry the first day, the day of rest. Give it to the Lord. Spend it with the Lord. Who are you trusting?
LH
Yep, yep. So you see, though, the company like Chick Fil A too, how they just you know, like business sense, it doesn't make any sense. You're like, that's a whole extra day. People buy a ton of fast food on Sundays. You can make so much extra money. But hasn’t hurt them at all.
PH
The Lord blesses.
LH
Yeah. Okay, live stream. Let's do that. That's a big one nowadays too. Again, that kind of arises during COVID, and that becomes more and more popular. A lot of people will use this as like an alternative to going to church, and you could make the case to yourself at least, it's easy to convince your own heart of this that this is more restful. I'm not feeling the best, and you know I've had a full day or too much social interaction in the morning service. I got to just relax. But how do we kind of treat live stream in in today's world?
PH
Well, I'm just going to underline that we all have to be honest before God. We all have to answer to God. So we all can make excuses and even have reasons and justify a lot of things to ourselves. We have to be really careful with that. Live stream service, in and of itself, can be a great blessing for those who legitimately can't come to the worship services. Let's start with that positive, okay? Compared to what we had before, with recordings and tapes and CDs, where people would have, if they were stuck at home, they were they were shut in, or they were in places where they could not get to, to they would love to be to worship at worship, but they couldn't get there. Then you know they either had a pre-recorded CD in the old and you know a decade ago. Now they can watch it live. That's a blessing. So let's acknowledge that. But if you're able to come to church and you don't have a legitimate reason for staying home, you're not doing right. You're not honoring the fourth commandment. So let's, I think, just be very clear about that. Leave it at that. It's pretty plain. Like if you stay home from worship, and you and you think that the Lord accepts live stream worship when you could go to church, that's wrong.
LH
And even as a blessing itself, and it is a blessing for those who can't go. It's not the same. It's still just there's no gathering element to that, really.
PH
100%. You are at best observing. So it's a second best option for those who are unable to go to the gathering of God's people, and then it can be a blessing because that’s all you can do. But if you're staying home by choice, you're not honoring the call of the Lord to worship on the Lord's Day.
LH
Okay, let's get in as we kind of you know bring the show to a close here. But there's a lot of good questions we have from listeners that want to kind of address. Yeah, we don't have to go rapid fire necessarily, but we'll see if we can get through them in in shorter order, if possible. Keeping in mind again this kind of idea of the two ditches, right? Avoiding the secularism or the complete you know go with my heart sort of kind of mentality of whatever I find to be restful, I should do. Like taking yourself out of the day and making sure it's focused on God would be the proper approach there. And then on the other ditch, the whole legalism side of things, of course, too, right? So maybe just high level, and then we'll get into some specifics. How would you counsel someone who struggles with one ditch or the other? Someone who says, "Yeah, like I grew up with a lot of these practices, and I think they're probably good, but also they can seem a little legalistic, and a lot of other Christians don't have these.” And I'm not sure about the biblical backing of these particular outworkings, whether that be, you know, whatever, let's take going out for dinner on a Sunday, for example, or lunch, or something. Something very common in a lot of other Christian circles, but not something that we typically practice in the Reformed tradition. How would you counsel someone on that side, and then also someone who's who kind of struggles with, yeah, it's a free world. I can do what I like, but you can kind of ensnare yourself in that as well.
PH
Well, I do think we should to just sort of take up the issue of going out to restaurants. I know that's a popular, in some places, a popular thing. And look, part of the fourth commandment is the requirement for us to rest. That's in the fourth commandment in Deuteronomy and in Exodus, it's we're also required to let our servants rest. We should not ignore that. Your male servant, your female servant, your ox, your donkey, all these creatures, the sojourner within your gates, they shall rest as well as you. Deuteronomy 5.
LH
That's what God wants.
PH
That's what God wants. So, okay, what's the principle there? Well, basically, we should not make anyone work for us to the extent possible that we can. So, when I walk into a restaurant on Sunday and order food, I am making someone work. I cannot square that with the 10th commandment, or the fourth commandment.
LH
Now, with the servants in the Old Testament context, they would have taken the day off of making food for their master.
PH
They would have, yeah.
LH
Who makes the food?
PH
I'm not exactly sure how they would have done it, but they, they perhaps they would have prepared it the night before. That seems to make the most sense practically speaking. But they were like that rest was quite serious. It was quite vigorously commanded. In they weren't even allowed to make a fire on the Sabbath day.
LH
Yeah. See. So, but that specific example that would be like okay, that's away with the ceremonial laws. Like that's the shadows, right? We cast that away, so why not cast away that that kind of component of it as well?
PH
Well, because the rest element, we're commanded to rest. That's an ongoing command, and we're also commanded to give our servants a rest.
LH
Yeah, but is that an ongoing command, though?
PH
I don't see how you can separate those two. Like, isn't it? Wouldn't it be selfish of me to say, "Well, I'm going to rest, but now I'm going to I'm going to make my servants work.” Like imagine I'm a I'm a boss. You're an employer, so you go to church, but you make your employees work on Sunday. Would that's would that be fair?
LH
No, no.
PH
No. And that's the principle I'm talking about. I think the fourth commandment is talking about you let your employees. Rest, even if they're not Christians, you give them that day. It's a the Sabbath was made for man.
LH
Yeah.
PH
So we should do whatever we can to not make people work for us. So like and you know when you go to the restaurant, yeah, people have to serve you. Well, if you didn't go and if enough people didn't go; the restaurant wouldn't open on Sunday. And I recognize that my one action, your one action, isn't likely to change the actions of others. But the principle of it is now: are we are we giving the opportunity for rest to that other person? And then I would say, you know what? We can do better. We can just stay home. We don't have to go to the restaurants on Sunday. Invite people over for fellowship, and I recognize there's a busyness on at home.
LH
There's a lot of serving that goes into that too.
PH
Yes. And I recognize that, but you know I think that way is you're having fellowship. There's ways I think to maybe make the fellowship a little easier going in terms of meal prep on a Sunday. It used to be the habit in in many Dutch Reformed churches, Dutch Reformed homes to have the soup made Saturday night, and maybe even to have the buns cut up Saturday night or whatever, so that basically meals like lunch and supper were simple fare, soup and buns, but you didn't have to do a lot of prep. I recognize you know some of that's changed, but maybe we can think in terms of hey, what kind of easy meals can we have on Sunday and make it easy for mom? I recognize that moms are often busy on Sundays, so I'm not saying we got we got we do everything right or perfect. I think I think we can think a lot harder about how to do Sundays better, how to honor the Lord, how to how to make it holy to the Lord, how to bless our own hearts by communing with God more richly than maybe we do now, rush, rush, rush, rush, rush all the time. Can we can we rethink that? I think there's lots of room to rethink things, and maybe we can also rethink how we do Saturday nights so that Sundays can be easier. Again, the principle of rest and worship those are those are key, and to lay aside all unnecessary work.
LH
Yeah. But then, yeah, you still have to draw some lines in terms of like travel kind of comes into play, vacations come into play. That's usually where you see a lot of principles get bent is on vacation in particular. So how do you kind of square that circle for when your vacation, which is explicitly for your rest, it's kind of your extension of multiple you know Sundays in a row, so to speak, maybe, but it's a different kind of rest there. So how are we defining rest nowadays? I think that's a key question.
PH
Yeah. So Lord's Day rest is setting aside your physical work or your everyday work, I should say. Like I want to just quote something from the Synod of Dordt 1618 1619. Synod of Dordt made six statements about the Sabbath day, day of rest. One of them is the Sabbath of the Jews having been abolished, the day of the Lord must be solemnly hallowed by Christians. That's a principle. The day of the Lord must be solemnly hallowed by Christians, and then another statement: This day must be so consecrated to worship that on that day we rest from all servile works, so ordinary works of our everyday labors, except those which charity and present necessity require, and also from all such recreations as interfere with worship. So there's a there's some principles there, and I think these are very healthy principles that have been followed by Reformed Churches, not just the Dutch Reformed, because the Synod of Dordt was an international synod, and this statement would have been appreciated by many Protestant churches. That we rest and we do what we can to give others that rest, even if they're not Christians. And when we plan our holidays, you mentioned holidays. Let's plan our holidays so that we can have rest and proper worship, proper rest and worship on the Lord's Day. Like in this day and age, more than any other day and age with the internet access, can we not think ahead and plan ahead, so that we're not traveling extensively, at least, on the Lord's Day, so that we're not bothering other people on the Lord's Day with our needs. That we're somewhere, and we are given that we look for an opportunity to be somewhere where there's a faithful church where we can gather with the local saints and be under the preaching of the word. Can we not do that? Man, we you can pick you can go on the internet, you can you can pick a faithful church, find them all over the world.
LH
Well, you can use live streaming, see what they actually operate as too. Check out some sermons.
PH
Right. So that we actually have less excuse now. But what you said earlier is. As I think, it's what we what we're doing in our hearts. We're we want to cut corners because there's other things that are competing for our heart.
LH
It's a preparation challenge more than anything, maybe then. Which is also kind of the Sunday, just to take the specific Sunday example too, if you're not preparing for it well on a Saturday, it's that much more of a temptation. For example, if you're not prepared for your meals or something, to be like, ah, just grab, grab a quick dinner and just whatever pick up some McDonald's or something, if you're in a rush.
PH
Yeah. And if I don't believe that this day is holy to the Lord creation, ordinance, then I guess it doesn't matter if I drive six hours on a on a Sunday and I'm and I'm tired and fatigued, and I'm and during those six hours, I'm not really communing with God. Like I, you know, this is where, this is where the root concept at creation. If we can get that back clear in our minds, then we're going to treat this day differently. We're going to treat it wholly, you know. And if we don't give our time to the Lord, like I can't be bothered to take. I want to drive home for my holiday on Sunday because I need to be back in work Monday. Well, I don't need to be back in work Monday, but I don't want to take Monday off.
LH
Yeah, it's a different thing.
PH
I don't. That's the that's a different thing. We all have the flexibility to take Monday off, make that a travel day, but actually, I don't want to do that because I want to save that holiday because you only have so many in a year for the next holiday. So, what's really going on there?
LH
Yeah, what do you actually value?
PH
It's more my pleasures and choices for me than it is the Lord's honor in the Lord's day. So the Lord's day is one of those days that it gives. It's a, it's like a litmus test. You know what's really going on in our heart. Where does our time really go? If you want to know what a whether a person is a sincere believer, follow their money and follow their time. What are they giving their money to? What are they giving their time to? Those things will tell the tale of what's going on in their heart.
LH
Yep. Similar, I don't know if we have this in our list here, but similar with sports on Sundays and stuff too, like how people try to fit that in where they can, sort of thing. But you inevitably end up against this rub, or even if you don't, you just you're making it so much more busy and harder to focus on what, how it's a holy day and how it's set apart.
PH
You come out of church in the morning and you got softball game. Your you know your kids got a little league game at 2 o'clock in the afternoon. Well, what is that child now thinking? What are you as a parent now thinking when you go to the game? It's all about the game.
LH
Yeah, gotta change in the van after church and then go out there and…
PH
It's all about you've lost the sense of this day is holy to the Lord. You can't tell me that you're going to the to the your child's softball game, and it's a you're thinking about the Lord, and you're communing with the Lord. No, you're not. You're all about that softball game, or the soccer game, or the hockey game, or whatever you've got going on in terms of sports. Sports is another idol of our age, and as Christians, we had better be careful that we don't make it our idol. It's all around us as an idol, there's so many idols around us, but sports is one of them. So I just want to mention that that again, the honesty before God. I have to answer to the Lord what I do with my child on the Lord's day, and have I treated the Lord's Day as a holy day by putting my child in a sports league that plays on Sunday, and that a day that's set aside to be holy to the Lord. Have I really done what is pleasing to the Lord? I can't square that in my conscience. Yeah, and it's not actually at the end of the day my conscience. I can't square it before the Lord.
LH
Yeah, yep. No, when you start with how we did right with in creation and work it all the way through, yeah, it it's applicable for us today. It's a day of rest. It's a holy day, and it's commanded still today to take that seriously. So, to intentionally put extra distractions into your Sunday is at best unwise.
PH
I'll give another example from my own when I was my own youth. When I was when I was a teen, we would have like friends would come over for lunch and we'd play board games.
LH
Yeah.
PH
Okay, that was nice, but I'm a kind of a competitive person, so I don't really like to lose board games, or maybe more so back in those days. So we'd be playing like a board game, like Monopoly or something like that. Monopoly can take a couple of hours, so we'd play between services, and then my friend would come back after the second service. Well, what was I thinking about during the second service?
LH
You should have bought Park Avenue.
PH
Yeah, I was thinking about all these purchases I should have made and what I was going to do when I get back home and you know, I'm a I'm a teenager in church, and I caught myself a number of times thinking about the game at home, sitting in church, and I, it, you know, the penny, I'm a bit of a slow guy that way, like the penny slowly dropped, and I realized at a certain moment, you know what? Like these competitive games, I like I'm not saying for other people maybe they can play them and they don't think about them. I know I can't. I can't think about… so I stopped doing that. I stopped playing competitive games like that between the services because I knew it was ruining my concentration for the afternoon, and I wasn't honoring the Lord. Another thing I've stopped doing for the most part is watching really intense movies or TV shows on a Saturday night because I, this is just me, okay, so we all have to sort of work these things out for ourselves. But, for me, I'd be thinking about that fairly intense drama, let's say, on Sunday, I'd find my mind going back and forth to what I was watching last night. So I just thought, I'm not going to do that. I want to be ready for the Lord's Day. I want the mind ready for worship, and that's what the Lord wants for me, so I can engage as fully as I can. So you know we have to all of us again. I come back to that. We all have to think through for ourselves how to honor this principle of rest and worship and giving the day wholly to the Lord. What can I do to make myself ready so that when Sunday morning comes, and not just the morning but the day that I am I'm here to give my heart to God. I'm here to do what He's given me this day for to commune with Him. What can I do to make that happen to the best? And I think if we work that out, we'll all find a good track to follow.
LH
What are what are some positive things that you can do to fill that day well in between the time where you're engaged or where when you're not engaged in corporate worship on a Sunday, if especially if your church has two services, so that's only so much time of the day. But like we got a question from a from a listener about if you're a young single person, you can actually tend to have quite a bit of time on Sundays. And how do you kind of fill that well? Like, is that engaging in fellowship? Like that's a common thing we always talk about. Like, what does that look like exactly? Like, you don't, you know, you probably don't have to necessarily spend the entire day in the Word. That might be a good thing to do, but that's a pretty intense approach to do every seven days. Like, what’s a good practice?
PH
I do I do believe that that fellowshipping with God's people, both inside the worship service and outside the worship service, is totally a Sunday thing to do. Totally appropriate. Like if you think of what Paul commands or describes the church as in 1 Corinthians 12, as the body of Christ, each with its each member being a part of the body, each part has its own role to play. Well, how can we possibly play a role in each other's lives if we aren't in each other's lives. So 1 Corinthians 12, same with Romans 12, implicitly is calling for us to understand each other, get to know each other, have conversations together, have fellowship together, meet together, have lunch together, have meals together. Not that long ago, we had a fellow over for coffee between services. He was kind of new to the Christian faith, and he hadn't really been to church before. So I said to him, "You want to come over for fellowship” And I didn't really think of the word I used. And he said, "Oh, what's fellowship?” “Oh,” I said, "Well, that's just you know it's just visiting together and hanging out together, getting to know each other.” “Oh,” he says, "Sure.” And then he came back to that word later on. He says, "I like this fellowship thing”, and so we kind of kid about it now. But you know, that's fellowship is a Sunday thing to do. The Lord Jesus says in one of his you know repartees to the Pharisees, "It is lawful to do good on the Sabbath.” Well, how can we do good to our fellow members in the body of Christ? A basic thing is get to know each other. A basic thing is how be in each other's lives. So, for a young single guy, or for even for marrieds, yeah, where you can have people over or inquire whether you can go and visit. And I encourage the non singles to think of inviting singles over, beautiful thing to do. Can be done both directions, but yeah. So I think spending time in each other's company, you know, maybe like things like reading good upbuilding literature doesn't necessarily have to be the Bible. Of course, that's excellent too, but it could be Christian literature of different kinds. What about thinking of way of visiting those who are shut in? You know, there are those who would love to be in church, right? You've got elderly members of the church can't make it out. Well, what about you know popping around and having a cup of tea with elderly Mrs. So and So or shut in Mr. So and So, or what have you? Maybe there's an old age home in the neighborhood that could use, again people there could use visits. These are just the tip of the iceberg. I think if we think about ways we can do good to God's people without overtaxing ourselves, because it is a day of rest, we should also absorb the physical rest and come out of the day refreshed physically and spiritually. The spiritual rest, of course, is primarily in Christ. Like we physically, we spiritually rest in Christ for the forgiveness of our sins. That's where our that's where that that great the greatest of all rest is found is in Christ. But there is a physical rest that the Lord grants us too, with the cessation of labor one day in seven. Yeah, we should we should we should benefit from that.
LH
Yeah, we are body and soul. You need both components that way too. What about works of necessity on the Sabbath? Because yeah, I always find this one to be a tricky one in particular. Because, like, one man's work of necessity is another man's like hobby or leisure activity.
PH
Yeah, and that is that is a tricky thing. And here again, I think we have to just be very honest with ourselves before the face of the Lord. Like between you and the Lord, you should be able to figure out whether this is a work of necessity, or whether this is a work of I want to do it because I like it. So I don't know that there's a straight up answer to that question, you know. And I realize that we live in a work world that's so integrated, where things move from one, like some industries are going 24/7, and you couldn't even stop them if you wanted to because they're going 24/7, and like the internet, the telephone services, hydro services, yeah, these are these are almost works of necessity in our time, so it's very difficult. At the same time, I would say let's as believers do what we can to honor the Lord's Day and to be free on that day to worship. So you take, let's take the work of nursing. We have lots of nurses in our reformed churches who serve in, it's a work of necessity. No one's going to dispute that, right? We need nurses in hospitals. They need to work on Sunday at some points. But lots of the nurses I know they're careful with they try to minimize their Sunday shifts or only take them when they, you know, when there's when there's a when there's a need, so that because they love church, they want to be in church. They recognize they have to take their turn once in a while, and that's appropriate. But you know, so we should be looking for ways to minimize Sunday, even works of necessity, minimize that on Sunday, so that we can maximize the attendance at worship service, and the involvement with the body of Christ.
LH
It’s kind of the same principle, though, as not making other people work on Sunday, right? If you're going to treat that in the restaurant context, right? If you're a nurse and there's whatever I don't know, 50 nurses and they rotate in and out of this various shift, and you know that, like practically speaking, maybe a lot of other people don't give a hoot about the Sunday, and they'll work at whatever. But out of a hey, like I know that the work needs to get done. It is necessary work, right? And you could make an argument based on the principle you outlined earlier that you should actually claim an equal amount of your appropriate shares of the Sunday work if you're trying to be consistent with that principle.
PH
Yeah, I can, I can, I can track with that argument. You know the difference between the two scenarios is the coworker who may want the Sunday shift, the difference between let's say like you're not making this person work. You're this person is would actually like the work. Like the job the job has to be done. Unlike a restaurant, the job does not have to be done. That's, I don't think you can say a restaurant is a work of necessity.
LH
What about hotel restaurant? We have that list on there too. But like business trips, if it goes over a weekend, over a Sunday, how do you kind of handle that, right? Or even just travel arrangements, like a lot of people, like we have it in our business too, where it's like, um, like there'll be a training course that runs from like Monday to Thursday or Monday to Friday, and it's like, okay, like, how do you want to handle that, right? Do you want to take the red eye and like get in at like six a.m. and then you know grab a coffee and go and get to class? Well, you're not going to be physically rested certainly, but you might have been able to make both services, or do you make it calculated? Like, okay, I'll fly out at seven, I'll catch the live stream when I'm sitting in the airport waiting for my flight to here, and I'll go to the morning service.
PH
Well, I mean, probably businessmen, Christian business businessmen would be better able to answer this question. But I know of a number of Christian business people who would, in that scenario would leave Saturday night or Saturday, and they would they would rest on Sunday in their in their destination and find a church there. Hopefully there is one, and then Monday they would go to their thing. So they would it would cost them an extra day, but they would do it for the sake of the Lord's Day.
LH
Yeah, but then I would weigh that against the cost of you missing out on fellowship with your local church, your home church, and then also your family in most cases as well. So I guess that's just a weighing of the principles there.
PH
Yeah, which one which one allows you to keep the Lord's Day holy? I guess you'd have to work that out. And again, honesty in the face of the Lord is your best guide in such decisions
LH
In honoring your duties as a husband and as a father too? That's another day you're away from your wife and your children.
PH
So there, yeah, I think you have to weigh those things. You can't ignore those responsibilities.
LH
Fair enough. Okay, we did get through quite a bit of questions there. Maybe one that we haven't touched on, which is a super relevant one, just this idea of a digital Sabbath and smartphones, and this is-it's funny that we're talking about this. This has been your thing for many years, and I've definitely pushed back on that. But you know, I you get a little older, you get a little smarter and less dumb. Maybe you do see the wisdom in there. Like personally, I try to set it aside as best I can, but I'm not making a strict, you know, legalistic thing. I tend to just leave it at home, but we usually take one phone between the two of us to church, just so you have in case you need it. But I'll leave it in the car or something, right? And then I'll pick it up more, tends to be after second service, unless you have people over. Then you don't end up looking at it much till you know 8 o'clock or something.
PH
Indeed. So, you know, to the start of the decision-making process for what to do with all the tech on the Lord's Day has to be what's going on in your heart. What what's what am I trying to do with the tech? What what's my goal here? What am I, why do I want access or don't want access to it? To avoid legalism, you have to know why you're doing what you're doing, and then do it with the integrity of your heart. So, yes, I think everyone needs to be making their own decision here. Like, is it is it right or wrong to have a cell phone in your pocket at church? In and of itself, it's not right or wrong. For the one person, it may be the wiser way to celebrate the Lord's Day because to have a phone in their pocket, they're more distracted. They can't not hear the thing vibrate. They can't not check email. They can't not answer a text. They're better off leaving it plugged in at home. For the next person, it's not a bother, and they don't have that kind of connection with their phone, and they actually have their Book of Praise on their phone, so they and they e transfer their amounts for the deaconry from their phone. So this is where you we need to leave each other free. Like if a practice by itself is not contravening the Lord's Day or some principle of Scripture. Then we need to leave each other free. But this is where I would encourage us to think in terms of best practices. And again, you have to start with the purpose of the Lord's day. What's going on in your heart? What's going on in my heart? You know, for us, and you know that. Like growing up, we just had a house rule, and I tried to explain that to you, you kids, that it was a house rule that we weren't going to watch, weren't going to have screens. We're just keeping all screens off. Like it was even before the cell phone thing, but we worked the cell phones into it. Why? So that we were distraction free, and we could give our time and attention to worship and to fellowship; those were that was sort of thing. And I made a point, at least I tried to, you know, telling you and your siblings, look, other people might decide it's okay to watch, be it TV or a movie or something on a Sunday evening or whatever it was. And I'm not saying that's a sin. I'm just saying, your mom and I don't think that's best practice, and certainly for our family, we don't think that's a good practice. So we're just keeping the screens off. Also, when the sports were on, like we didn't watch, as you know, somewhat to your chagrin, if I recall, Stanley Cup playoffs, we didn't we didn't have the TV on Sundays. World Cup, we just didn't have the TV on, and that was an effort to keep the distraction away and to show, indeed, or to honor the Lord. So the focus was on the Lord. So we all have to give that thought, and again, we all have to answer for these things. So we should we need to be honest before the Lord. We have to have a humility also toward other people. Like the practice in our home doesn't mean doesn't set the standard for the practice in somebody else's home, right? There are such a thing as house rules, which may be good and beneficial for our home, but they're not mandatory for the next home and we have to be careful that we don't impose that on each other.
LH
Yeah, transpose those over. Is that kind of like when Paul talks about like not what is the passage there where it's like if your brother if they have if it hurts their conscience like don't press them on it sort of like the eating or the following the ceremonial laws
PH
Romans 14 is a bit tricky because it's very… Romans 14 is about those who were Jewish Christians taking what they believed were mandatory things from God's from the Mosaic laws and imposing them on fellow Christians who didn't think they were mandatory.
LH
Ah, okay.
PH
I think that's a bit of a different kettle of fish than me saying to you, "Look, you can't watch TV at all because I think it's wrong.” That's a different. I think Romans 14 isn't about that.
LH
Okay, it's saying don't burden your brother sister their conscience. That whole idea, or is not that's not the idea.
PH
Well, I the Bible does not give me any right to say to you that what I deem to be appropriate for my family, in this case, not watching TV, is therefore mandatory on your family. I may not say that, right, and that's why I'm very careful to say it's not a sin, I just don't think it's best practice for the Lord's Day. And that’s what I'm doing. I'm in charge of my house, so I have to. That's how we're doing it here. And maybe you can just you know later on you can tell me what's best what you think is best practice, and we can talk about it.
LH
Yeah, you can engage on the principles at play there.
PH
And I might and I might change my mind later on and say you know what maybe your practice is actually better than mine. I've observed by the way, and I think that's really good to take a look around what other people are doing? Serious Christians. How are they celebrating and honoring the Lord's Day? Are there things to be learned? Can we benefit from how they're thinking about it? Let's talk with each other. What are the thoughts about how? What are best practices to honor the Lord's Day? Yeah. Wouldn't that be an uplifting thing for all of us?
LH
Totally. Yeah. Because it can get stale over time too, right? If you think that oh no, I've kind of figured it out, and this is how it's done, right? And then it just becomes this rote thing, and yeah, you have to has to be living in your heart and considering it more often. What about I know I said we're almost at the end here, but there's one other maybe good one to touch on, which is just this the idol of family, and how we talk a lot about fellowship, right, in this episode, and that is good and well to engage in fellowship with family, with friends, with believers in the church, and or anybody really in that regard. But are we at a danger of making an idol out of family? Because that's, I think, culturally, like it's you mentioned sports for sure, that's a massive one where the world tries to fill the hole of the seventh day and put entertainment in there, but I think if you say like if you try to defend your Sunday position as someone else who's not a Christian, you say, oh, like we go to church and we spend time with family, and you know. Not saying you're a bad person, we just this is how we do it, and these are the things we spend our time on. And people kind of get that, but I think there's just like a real high value of a family in that context, and is that something we should be aware of as Christians and think through?
PH
Yes, I think we should be aware of it. I think it's something we can fall into, like when if we have a large family and we have adult kids in our own congregation, it would be very, let's say, easy, natural, just to have our family over for coffee after services. A lot of us have a custom of having coffee after the morning service, and then your yeah your family comes over if they're available, or they might come for supper, and then what happens is not by choice, like not by a deliberate decision, but other people don't get invited because you've already got people coming over. And I do know I've that some people even think of Sunday. Well, Sunday is a family day, and then I would just say I would just caution to say, look, it's beautiful that you that that we, you, we celebrate the Lord's Day with family, but trying to broaden that out. Like, don't forget the family of God. The family of God is of critical importance, and I recognize your blood family is often part of the family of God. But can we look beyond our families to see the needs of others in the congregation? Because if we only focus on our families, we do run the danger of having cliques where we're just about we basically have a little you know taken to its extreme you have a church within the church basically this large family hangs together and not a lot of people are interpenetrate that circle that'd be an extreme that wouldn't be healthy.
LH
No.
PH
I think we want to honor the whole body of Christ. We want to that would be healthy if we interact with more people and we have people over, we go to their homes if we get invited. If there is a social activity, sometimes there's a fellowship activity on a Sunday night. The young people might have a games night, or somebody says, "Oh, there's an open house at our in our backyard tonight” on a nice summer evening. Well, then you know, then you go there. Please don't stay home and say, "Well, it's our family night”, and you never show up at these events. So yes, there's a risk of it. I I'd never have met anybody that is let's say doing that on purpose. It didn't fall into it. So let's everyone just give it a thought and see if we can expand the love to include the whole body of Christ.
LH
Yep. Cool. Okay. Well, I think we covered a ton of ground. Come back to the theme of heart posture and being honest with yourself and before your Maker, and obviously just noting the importance of this holy day that is set apart and how that starts in creation and continues all the way through. So thanks for coming on. Appreciate it. That was, yeah, a lot of fun to kind of walk through this with you and hope people enjoyed it. We probably didn't get to every last little piece of the outline and all the questions we had. But I think we covered a lot of the core themes here, and if you're still listening at this point, I hope you really enjoyed it because it was probably a long one. And yeah, if you have any questions, comments, concerns, send them in, and if we need more discussion on this, we're happy to do so as well. And don't forget to check out Foundations if you're interested in purchasing a copy at Reformed Book Services. So thanks, Dad. Appreciate it. Thank you. Thanks, listeners. Till next time, Real Talk....
I felt like an awful mother those first weeks. I felt like this baby who cried constantly could not love me. I felt like my daughter was a stranger I'd expected to know and understand and yet I somehow didn't. Like I'd never received the mother instinct I was supposed to be born with.
When I was pregnant, strangers started talking to me. "Congratulations! How many months?" they said, or, "When are you due?" I'm used to feeling somewhat invisible as I move through the world, but as my belly grew, I no longer faded into the crowd. And since I was excited, I enjoyed the excitement of people around me, even as I marveled that the thought of a birth could make so many people smile like that.
In the beginning, I did take time for myself here and there. But I always knew I had to go back, and I still felt like what I had to do was beyond me. I was terrified at how I wanted these breaks to last forever, and I felt like that must make me a bad mother.
