Sabbath: Beyond Right and Wrong (Sabbath IV)

Because of our conditioning in The Human Paradigm, we tend to think about life in terms of dos and don’ts, or rights and wrongs. This approach actually leads directly into grumbling and complaining because, in The Human Paradigm, we will likely approach Sabbath (as we do with any practice) with the question, “Am I doing it right?”

Thinking in terms of right and wrong is helpful for our human development. Children need a clear sense of right and wrong if they are to develop as human beings. But it’s also important for us to see that Jesus’ primary orientation to life is not about right and wrong but instead about life and death. Jesus is about eschewing death and embracing life.[1]What’s “wrong”in Jesus’ book is anything that leads to death; what is “right” is what leads to life—spiritual, emotional, and physical. 

This means that, while God is certainly fully concerned with morality, he’s not interested in mere rule-keeping, which is a substitute for morality. He is ultimately concerned about life and death. Thinking in rights and wrongs is really just a set of training wheels until we are mature enough to dwell in the life of God, after which rights and wrongs will naturally take care of themselves.[2]As Paul says succinctly, “Love fulfills the requirement of the Law.”[3]If you live in God’s love, your heart will naturally forsake evil and cling to all that’s good and beautiful. 

When Jesus and his disciples are confronted by some rigid religious folk for breaking the Sabbath by picking and eating grain, Jesus confronts their limited paradigm of right and wrong with the bigger paradigm of life and death.[4]He says:

Haven’t you read in the Scriptures what David did when he and his companions were hungry?           He went into the house of God, and he and his companions broke the law by eating the sacred loaves of bread that only the priests are allowed to eat. And haven’t you read in the law of Moses that the priests on duty in the Temple may work on the Sabbath? I tell you, there is one here who is even greater than the Temple! But you would not have condemned my innocent disciples if you knew the meaning of this Scripture: ‘I want you to show mercy, not offer sacrifices.’For the Son of Man is Lord, even over the Sabbath![5]

Jesus challenges the religious leaders’ merely normative approach to morality—which is a focus on right and wrong—with a focus on situational wisdom, which requires a willingness to transcend mere rule-keeping in the pursuit of abundant life.[6]This sort of wisdom can befuddle rigid religious folk. It requires a real dependence on the Holy Spirit, not just a “paint by numbers” approach to spirituality.

The point of Sabbath, then, is not to “do it right,” but rather to ground us in life so that we can give life for others. This is true for any spiritual practice; we know it’s working not when we are doing it “right” but when it’s producing freedom in us and then for others, through us.

[1]Echoing Dueteronomy 30:15-20.

[2]Cf. Galatians 3:24, Romans 13:8-13.

[3]Romans 13:10.

[4]Within Second Temple Period Judaism, there were all sorts of unwritten laws about what constituted “work,” and picking grain was included on the list.

[5]Matthew 12:3-8.

[6]For more on normative versus situational and existential approaches to ethics and morality, see the work of John M. Frame. For example: http://frame-poythress.org/a-primer-on-perspectivalism/ [May 8, 2017.]

Sabbath: The Warning of Unrest (Sabbath III)

Sabbath also comes with a warning. If we fail to rest, it’s probably because we don’t ultimately trust God’s goodness, and this is a perilous matter for our spiritual lives. 

The writer of Hebrews, writing hundreds of years after Deuteronomy and years after Jesus, says, “So there is a Sabbath reststill waiting for the people of God. 

For all who have entered into God’s rest have rested from their labors, just as God did after creating the world. So let us do our best to enter that rest. But if we disobey God, as the people of Israel did, we will fall.”[1]

The writer of Hebrews uses the Sabbath as a metaphor for spiritual rest. “Resting from our labor” reminds me of leaving The Human Paradigm and entering into The Jesus Paradigm; this is something we must, paradoxically, work hard to do! One translation captures it by saying says we must “labor to rest.”[2]Indeed, what a paradox. It is a labor and a work for us to trust God and thereby to come into a knowledge of His goodness. It’s especially difficult when the things we think areimportant(our comfort, our control, our sense of power) are being stripped away. But it’s this aim—of knowing and trusting God’s goodness despite the suffering of life—that undergirds the practice of Sabbath. When we know God’s goodness, it provides a sort of transcendent rest which no pain or suffering or circumstance can rob from us. Our knowledge gives us eyes to see the eternal all around us, beyond the passing afflictions of our lives.[3]

Israel, the writer of Hebrews is telling us, failed to enter into this rest. He is referring to the grumbling of the nation of Israel in the wilderness, when they refused to trust God and instead lost heart and began complaining.[4]We see the familiar pattern once again: the root of any temptation we’ll ever face is the belief that God is not really good and doesn’t have our best interest at heart—in short, the belief that God cannot be trusted.[5]The grumbling of Israel was rooted in this unbelief, and the writer of Psalm 95 describes this sort of consistent unbelief as “hard-heartedness.”[6]Hard-heartedness, which is a recurring theme of Scripture, is linked to unbelief, which is ultimately at the heart of sin.[7]This hard-heartedness became a recurring reality in the life of Israel, even after entering the Promised Land. The nation may have kept the letter of the Law in terms of keeping the Sabbath, but they missed the greater aim of knowing and trusting God. They “rested,” but they didn’t find real rest. As Scripture makes clear, you can “worship God” with a heart that is actually far from Him.[8]And “worshipping God” with a hard heart misses the point.

But why the grumbling and complaining? Why the failure to trust God, especially when the nation had seen God do such great things? 

Because trust is vulnerable. Always. Trust, as the writer of Hebrews point out, takes work. There is a labor to it, what Jesus called “losing your life.”[9]Israel was not willing to walk in this vulnerability and in this labor. It’s easier to turn from God and to worship idols, to prefer the immediacy of something you can touch and see to the ambiguities involved in trusting God. It makes sense to us, and we all do it. Furthermore, life in the desert was hard, and when life is hard, we feel justified in our unbelief. This, too, is a consistent pattern, both for Israel and for us. It’s easy to judge Israel until we see that we are no different. 

The warning that accompanies Sabbath, then, is this: a lack of trust will keep us from the rest God desires for us. It’s possible, as the writer of Hebrews makes clear, notto enter into that rest, and this is the heart of the warning. Our whole journey of faith rests on whether we believethat God is good, no matter what; it’s our belief that determines whether we taste that reality or not. Some things have to be seen to be seen, but some things have to be believed to be seen. This is why the walk of faith cuts against the grain. Trusting in the midst of disorientation and when we don’t have all the answers is a soul-transforming choice, especially when grumbling or complaining come so naturally to us. But our souls can be formed through the habit of trust and thanksgiving, and we can thereby taste the reality of rest promised in Scripture. Sabbath is another expression of trust, by which we refuse to enter into grumbling and complaining. By practicing it, we claim—with hope and faith—the reality that God has rest for us. 

[1]Hebrews 4:9-11.

[2]Hebrews 4:11, KJV.

[3]See Romans 8:18-23.

[4]See Psalm 95, which is heavily referenced in Hebrews 4.

[5]Cf. Matthew 4:1-11.

[6]Psalm 95:8, Hebrews 4:7.

[7]See, for example, Ezekiel 11:19.

[8]Isaiah 29:13 and Matthew 15:8.

[9]Matthew 10:39.

Sabbath: To Work from a Place of Rest (Sabbath II)

Imagine walking a rigorous, six-mile hike. By the end of it, you have rocks in your shoes. Some nettles have stung your skin. Thorns have caught in your clothes. Your legs are scraped. But you step into a clearing, and, miraculously, the rocks are dissolved, the nettles fall off, the scrapes are healed. That is what the Sabbath is like. Or at least, what the Sabbath can be like. 

Life stings us, yes. Over the course of six days, it can wear us out. But we are supposed to remember that our lives are dedicated to something bigger than just survival or hollow notions of success. We are, through a unique time of rest, meant to be reminded of who God is and that life has an eternal scope and dimension to it. 

Sabbath, then, is a unique invitation from God, and it’s very different than the notions of rests that have become currency in our society. In our culture, we often think about rest as “living to get to the weekend,” which ends up making life a sort of drudgery filled with fleeting moments of respite. Sabbath is very different than just enduring work in order to get to playtime. God has designed Sabbath to be a catalyst for spiritual renewal and a rest that infuses the entire week with energy. We are meant to work from a place of rest, not the way other way around. Do we have the faith to believe this and to trust the God who loves us and wants to give us rest?[1]

[1]To ground yourself in this truth, see Psalm 127:2 and all of Matthew 6.