From the beginning of the world to the resurrection of Christ, God appointed the seventh day of the week to be the weekly sabbath; and the first day of the week ever since, to continue to the end of the world, which is the Christian sabbath.
Westminster Shorter Catechism, 59
There are two things which those who were once young, reformed, and restless… and are over time becoming mature, Reformed, and settled down… often struggle with as they move forward toward a more robust confessionalism.
The first is the Second Commandment, and everything related to it. They struggle with the Regulative Principle of Worship, having come largely from a pragmatically driven ecclesiology which sees the end justify the means in reference to modes and methodologies. They also struggle with the Reformed understanding of images of God and Christ, having grown up with the Jesus Story Book Bible, and participating in Christmas and Easter pageants as children.
The second, and today’s subject is the Fourth Commandment. For those coming out of a pietistic evangelical background, the Lord’s Day is often seen as a sort of public gathering which supplements your private devotion to God. It’s the place you go to see other Christians, not the place you go to meet with God.
Sabbath? I thought that was abrogated!
As people move forward in Reformed theology, they tend to realize that these two things are related to the rest of Reformed theology in organic ways, so they struggle to bring these positions into alignment. However, even once they realize that the Lord’s Day is of central importance in the weekly rhythm of Christ’s Body, they still struggle to understand how that connects to the fourth commandment. They might say “sure, we are to worship God on Sunday, but it’s a bit much to consider it the Christian Sabbath.”
This problem is compounded by the near-constant barrage of commentary by New Covenant Theology and Dispensationalism (really, two birds of a feather when you break it all down), the former proclaiming “Christ is our Sabbath, we don’t have any other” and the latter saying “The Christian dispensation does not have that Law.”
These two positions often rally to the “fact” that the New Testament does not repeat or reiterate the fourth commandment anywhere.
That is what we’re going to talk about today. What if I told you that it did?
The Exegetical Grounding
To understand how we have to do a little bit of heavy exegetical lifting. Stay with me here.
not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another, and all the more as you see the Day drawing near.
Hebrews 10:25, ESV
We’ll come back to Hebrews, but to understand my argument we have to go back to the two times in Scripture that Moses delivers the 10 commandments to the people.
The first, of course, is in Exodus 20.
8 “Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy. 9 Six days you shall labor, and do all your work, 10 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. 11 For in six days the LORD made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them, and rested on the seventh day. Therefore the LORD blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy.
Exodus 20:8-11, ESV
Do you see how this commandment unfolds? There is a command given, and then there is a reason for that commandment given. The reason why the Sabbath is on the 7th day, is because the 7th day is the one the LORD blessed and made holy at the end of the creation of the world. The celebration of the Hebrew Sabbath on the 7th day signifies something important. The hope of the Hebrew mind was to enter into the rest which God had set aside for them in the promised land. This promise was as sure as the fact that God rested when he created the whole world, just as they would rest by entering the land which God had created for them. God gives them a command, and he justifies that command by grounding it in his previous works, which points toward a coming hope for the future.
12 “ ‘Observe the Sabbath day, to keep it holy, as the LORD your God commanded you. 13 Six days you shall labor and do all your work, 14 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, or your ox or your donkey or any of your livestock, or the sojourner who is within your gates, that your male servant and your female servant may rest as well as you. 15 You shall remember that you were a slave in the land of Egypt, and the LORD your God brought you out from there with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm. Therefore the LORD your God commanded you to keep the Sabbath day.
Deuteronomy 5:12-15, ESV
In Deuteronomy, we see the same pattern. God delivers the command, and he also delivers the reason. However, in the second giving of the 10 commandments, the reason is slightly different. Rather than point to God’s rest in creation, he points to the fact that God delivered hem out of slavery. The thing which this ultimately signifies is the same. God has determined to give his people rest, and he rescued them out of Egypt to make this a reality. God gives them a command, and he justifies that command by grounding it in his previous works, which points toward a coming hope for the future.
But we can’t miss the pattern here. God commands his people to rest and worship one day in seven, which is a remembrance of his mighty works of creation and deliverance. This was to be a perpetual ordinance for them.
Jesus is our Sabbath
The fact that this typological celebration continued (and intensified) after the people entered the land tells us something. The author of Hebrews picks up this argument and explains:
8 For if Joshua had given them rest, God would not have spoken of another day later on. 9 So then, there remains a Sabbath rest for the people of God, 10 for whoever has entered God’s rest has also rested from his works as God did from his.
Hebrews 4:8-10, ESV
You see, the Sabbath pointed to something beyond the temporal rest of God’s people in the land of Canaan. The rest of which Moses spoke was actually the eternal rest which God’s people would have with him in the New Heaven and the New Earth. The Sabbath rest of God’s people is found in Christ and Christ alone.
But isn’t that what the NCTs and Dispyss say?
Yes, and No.
You see, the author of Hebrews goes on to explain that we still need to strive to enter that rest. Although we are in Christ, we have not yet obtained our final Sabbath. It is a certain and sure reality that those who trust in Christ will reach what was signified on the 7th day… and that brings us around to Hebrews 10:25 and the opening citation from the Westminster Shorter Catechism.
not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another, and all the more as you see the Day drawing near.
Hebrews 10:25, ESV
Do you see it? Command… Justification… Hope.
The author here commands the people not to fail to gather together, contrasts it to those who do not do this, and points to the final eschatological rest of God’s people found in Christ in the true promised land.
To further bolster this connection… he does not use the ordinary word for gathering which was common in koine Greek. Instead, he uses episunagōgḗ. This word is only used one other time in the New Testament.
2 Now concerning the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ and our being gathered together to him
2 Thessalonians 2:1a, ESV (Emphasis Mine)
Do you see it? The selection of this word by the author of Hebrews helps us understand what The Lord’s Day is. It is an anticipatory remembrance of the mighty works of God, in which the Lord’s people episunagōgḗ together to look forward to and typologically anticipate the day when we will ultimately be episunagōgḗ together with the Lord.
We celebrate the Sabbath, because we celebrate Jesus
Just as the Hebrew people gathered together on the 7th day to remember and anticipate the ultimate salvation of God’s people… gathering on the day in which God rested from His work of creation, gathering together to remember and celebrate the deliverance from Egypt and God’s promise of ultimate rest… so do God’s people now gather together on the day in which Christ recreated us in him by rising from the dead.
The logic of the author of Hebrews is clear:
We must not neglect to gather on the Lord’s Day (Hebrews 10:25), because on it we celebrate and look forward to when we will be gathered on the Day of the Lord. (2 Thessalonians 2:1)