Lord's Day Obedience

Loving God by living for his pleasure engages all of life, even life on Sunday. Some may take Jesus' words that man was not made for the sabbath but the sabbath for the man in a way that allows them to go where they wish and do what they will on the Lord's Day. But to do this is to misconstrue his meaning.

The sabbath command is part of the moral law that instructs us what is the pleasure of God. His pleasure is for his people to keep it as they cease from their labors and find their rest and refreshment in the knowledge and enjoyment of who his is. And it is in the context of his peoples covenant keeping that he uses his means of grace to make his people like himself. God delights in himself and in himself being known and enjoyed so he has given us a day in his presence for his own pleasure and our joy in him.

Keeping the Lord's Day Holy is part of keeping all God's commandments. Jesus says if you love me you will keep my commandments. He did not say some of them or just the ones you like or the ones that are not a cultural taboo. No, he said his commandments. And we wonder why we are so weak spiritually as a church and why the church has such little or even an ill effect upon the culture? Maybe the test of whether we have lost our first love is whether we want to be in the presence of the one we say we love. Keeping the Lord's Day is about grace filled lives doing the pleasure of God and calling it a delight.

Phillip Ryken in his commentary on Exodus has a poem written by Seitze Buning that magnifies the truth that keeping the Lord's Day holy is a part of the whole life that Christians live in obedience to their Lord. He grew up in a Dutch reformed home and this poem is reflection on what he learned from his parents about keeping the Lord's Day holy.

Were my parents right or wrong not to mow the ripe oats that Sunday morning with the rainstorm threatening?

I reminded them that the Sabbath was made for man and of the ox fallen into the pit. Without an oats crop, I argued, the cattle would need to survive on town bought oats and then it wouldn't pay to keep them. Isn't selling cattle at a loss like an ox in a pit?

My parents did not argue. We went to church. We sang the usual psalms louder than usual. We, and the others whose harvests were at stake...

For more floods came and more winds blew and beat upon that House than we had figured on, even, more lighting and thunder and hail the size of pullet eggs. Falling branches snapped the electric wires. We sang the closing psalm without the organ and in the dark. Afterward we rode by our oat field flattened.

"We still will mow it," Dad said. "Ten bushels to the acre, maybe, what would have been fifty if I had mowed right after milking and if the whole family had shocked. We could have had it weatherproof before the storm."

Later at dinner Dad said, "God was testing us. I am glad we went. Those psalms never gave me such a lift as this morning." Mother said, "I wouldn't have missed it." And even I thought but did not say. How guilty we would feel now if we had saved the harvest.

The one time Dad asked me why I live in a Black neighborhood. I reminded him of that Sunday morning. Immediately he understood.

What is the connection between keeping the Lord's Day holy and loving your neighbor across racial lines? Keeping one commandment is a part of keeping all the commandments. The whole life of the Christian in obedience by faith in Christ through his grace is pleasing to God and a blessing to his creatures.