What Is Your Sabbath To Me?

Are Christians obligated to honor the Law that says you shall work six days and keep the seventh day holy to Yahweh?

I am laboring to revisit this question by answering it through a critique of Walter Chantry's book titled "Call The Sabbath A Delight," published by Banner of Truth Trust, and for a defense of the gospel of reconciliation (2Cor.5:16-19). But, Lord willing, I will try to do this through a series of blog posts over the course of several days, maybe weeks. So bear with me as I search for time to fit this in among my other responsibilities. If you are genuinely seeking to understand your liberty in Christ and to abide in the Word of Truth as a true disciple of Christ (Gal.5:1-15), please be praying with me as you follow along. Pray first for your own understanding, that you would not be led away by every form of doctrine through the cleverness and proud plotting of men and of demons (Eph.4:9-16).

I want to begin by stating that some men are just confused and are genuinely trying to honor the Lord (in what they think) he has commanded regarding the Sabbath. However, the next series of blog posts are not planned to be a malicious attack on anyone's character and godliness but a rebuke to long-held misunderstandings of church tradition that have clung to the body of Christ like leprous sores since the Reformation. It began with the demons of Rome and the god of those ages that apostatized from the true gospel. Therefore, my premeditated prayer is that the blemishes currently cast upon Christ's church by those Satanic lies (and attacks) will fall upon that demonic form and body of doctrine of that Roman whore, who has set her throne above the headship of our resurrected Lord, and not upon that beautiful and spotless bride of Christ (Rev.17:1-5,1 8).

So let's begin. Walter begins his book like any intelligent, spiritual minister by laboring to diagnose the spiritual disease of the culture. In this diagnosis, there is much I can yoke myself with against worldliness in the fight to keep the faith in a crooked and perverse generation (Dt.32:5; Phil.2:15). But every age is 'corrupt, crooked, and depraved,' as he said of our present era. He also wants to use the Law as the standard by which we should judge our culture; therefore, using it lawfully (1Tim.1:5-11), I can yoke myself with him under that truth. But, again, we must not use this to judge the precious bride of Christ, for that would be unlawful because of the law of faith that is imputed to her by the gift of the Holy Spirit (Rom.3:27-28; 4:13-16). If she is joined to the Lord, she is one Spirit with him; therefore, she is not under law but grace (1Cor.6:17; Rom.6:14-15, 20). And if she is under grace, she is only permitted to be judged by her faith (Rom.8:31-39).

Walter plans to use the so-called "moral law" known as the ten commandments to address the popular social ills. Again, I agree with him up until he uses these against the bride of Christ. She is not under the sign(s) of Israel's covenant with her types and shadows that were the schoolmaster to lead all the nations to observe Christ as the King of kings. Mr. Chantry says, 'Public education is in moral crisis.' You'd have to be spiritually blind not to Amen that statement. 'Educators are concerned and promise to teach the children 'values.' Yet the Christian knows that our schools are determined never to teach (the fear of the Lord), which is foundational to every moral strength,' says Walter. You'd have to be a spiritual idiot not to shake hands with that assessment. Mr. Chantry goes on to state, 'Children whose families are firmly knit to churches are forced into difficult decisions of either refusing to enter school programs or pulling back from their churches. Schools are helping to undermine the very moral influences they claim desperately to desire.' He's right! But that's a subject for another day and has nothing to do with honoring the sabbath that God made for man; and nothing to do with how a Sabbath remains holy to Christ and his bride for whom he died to make holy in himself as the Keeper of the Eternal Sabbath (2Cor.5:13-15).

Now that you have the direction I am going with this critique, prayerfully consider taking Christ's yoke upon you and rest at the feet of the Scriptures with the Spirit as our guide. Pray that he will choose to come alongside us and blow us in the direction of peaceful waves. Now, it is true that there is much to blame of our nation's culture that causes our children to idolize the Sunday afternoon sports stars. But that is not what defiles our worship on any day of the created week. Our children idolize those things because of the depravity of their own hearts. And that defiles everything they do because their motivation isn't through reconciliation to God, even when they do 'good things' in the name of the Lord (Matt.7:21-23). 'Who has done more to destroy the patterns of worship than professional athletes,' you ask Mr. Chantry? Why it was that damned deceiver who hates the souls of men and loves to put himself forward to be worshipped. You don't have to be a sports star to fall into that category!

But what I want to address in the coming blog posts, Lord willing, is that no man was made to be holy by God for a single day of the week and secular for six days of common work. Brother, you suggest that nothing but a weekly sabbath will 'touch the ignorance that has gripped humanity and that this alone, under God, can save families, churches, schools, and governments from total moral collapse.' Walter, that's a denial of the sufficiency of the Scriptures. You are contributing to the lie that the devil uses to sow unbelief into the little ones who believe Jesus is our Sabbath rest (Matt.18:6). How does observing one created day of the week as holy become sufficient to save? Our delight shouldn't be of any day of the week if we don't have Christ as our Sabbath rest. Because you have made the Christian Sabbath a created day of the week, it isn't any wonder they refuse to call 'your sabbath' a delight (Isa.1:12-15).

You can use the Law as a sign of judgment against the governments of men all the livelong day, but don't bring Christ's bride in subjection to a sign of God's judgment (Isa.28:16-18; 1Pet.2:4-8). That sign made no one holy without faith in the true and living Lord. Is Christ still crucified? Is he still in his tomb? By all means, bury the ungodly with the heavy yoke of the Law until they thirst for the true Christ, but don't cast yourself out as manure because you want to bring every member of Christ's resurrected body under the elementary principles (and patterns) of this world!

As I will try to labor to show, for some, because of the culture, the Lord's Day truly is the only sabbath a laborer has to spend on himself, for it was indeed made for him and not him for it. I think it is foolish to rob a working man of his earthly rest to honor a day of devotion to so-called holy works that bear no fruit or delight in the only salvation that God provided for men. Of course, we shouldn't permit any professing Christian to neglect gathering together to sit at the feet of Christ, but how they choose to rest in the yoke that Christ gives them is only for their delight (Lk.10:38-32). You don't have the authority to say how they are to delight in the sabbath that was made for them (Rom.14:4; Mk.2:27), for neither were they made for your sabbaths (Rom.14:22; Gal.6:1-6). You say that no successful recovery of mankind can be devised without the inclusion of the fourth commandment (in remedy), but that is a lie.

The working man wasn't made for you, nor for the glory of you (Rom.2:23; Matt.15:3-9; Mk.7:6-13). "And many such things you do!" The Exodus of Egypt was about that very subject: uniformity. The ironic thing about it was that a sabbath rest was given to Israel as a 'national' sign so that no taskmaster could ever make them a slave to another created man's glory and honor again. That national covenant is what set them apart industrially from all the other laboring nations who forced their slaves to worship the superiority of their master's god(s). God sanctified himself in them through faith in this sign of promise to give them a full day of rest, but the sign required the whole nation to be submissive to it, to keep their slaves from being abused as they were in Egypt. I have to close here for today, but Lord willing, we will address these presuppositions later.