Episode 130: The Joy of the Christian Sabbath

To the Ruled Church Podcast.

Christ the King and the Church as a Monarchy

This is my beloved son, with whom I am well pleased. He is honored, and I get the glory. And by the way, it's even better, because you see that building in Perryville, Arkansas? You see that one in Pechote, Mexico?

Do you see that one in Tuxla, Guterres, down there in Chiapas? That building has my son's name on it.

The church is not a democracy, it's a monarchy. Christ is king.

You can't be Christian without a local church.

You can't do anything better than to bend your knee and bow your heart, turn from your sin and repentance, believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and join up with a good Bible-believing church, and spend your life serving Jesus in a local, visible congregation.

One of our guests is laughing at my technological abilities. Actually, I should say technological disabilities. So I'm only 39, Landon, but my technology has outpaced me. So welcome to the Rural Church Podcast.

I'm your host, Alan Nelson. I'm one of the elders at Providence Baptist Church. We're a Reformed Baptist Church in central Arkansas, Perryville, just outside of Toadstuck, if you don't know where Perryville is.

So maybe that helps you a little bit. And joining with me is a good brother, a friend, a dear friend, actually, and a no stranger to the Rural Church Podcast. That is Pastor Jonathan Murdock. Hello, brother.

Hey, brother.

It's great to be with you guys again.

I'm just glad that we're talking about something not controversial this time.

Right, like there should be no controversy.

Yeah, because every time you're on here, we talk about something controversial.

I know, every time.

Today, we get to talk about something no one will have any problems with. None. So Pastor Jonathan is one of the elders at Trinity Baptist Church in Port Arthur, Texas. He's also a co-laborer with me in FIRM, Fellowship of International Reform Missions, with our dear brother and friend, Pastor Randall Easter of By the Word Baptist Church in Azel, Texas.

But a first-time guest this morning, or I say this morning, I don't know when you're listening to this, we're recording it in the morning, is Brother Landon Schrock. Landon, before, hold on, let me say this.

Before you introduce yourself, tell us about who you are, your church, here's a question I always ask first-time guests. Did you ever foresee a time in your life, like younger days, that you're like, you know, one day I will have such ministerial acumen that I will be invited on the Rural Church Podcast?

Yes.

Did you ever foresee that?

I didn't. This is a total shock.

Yeah. Yeah.

Shock to the Schrock. So let me

You have arrived, brother. You've made it.

This is a particular honor, brother, that

You've taken hold of it, so.

Amen.

Why don't you tell us just a little bit about yourself and your church and your family, if you want to?

Yeah.

So I'm one of the elders at Legacy Baptist Church in Northwest Arkansas. We're in Bella Vista. So it's like all the way at the tippy top corner of Northwest Arkansas. And we've been there 11 years, I guess we joined at the end of 14 or beginning of 15.

And I've been an elder there for the last five. My wife and I, Heather, have been married 19 years. And we just had our seventh, goodness, I guess back in August.

So Congratulations, brother.

Yeah, that's me.

Amen.

I'm a student. Still, goodness, still after five years, I'm still a student at Covenant Baptist Theological Seminary.

How much longer?

I'm on the slow track.

Okay.

So I've probably got, I want to say, I've probably got about two years left.

Okay. Yeah.

Sam Waldron has been on the Rural Church Podcast.

Man, that is, I'm a little bit more humbled to be here now.

So he's a good brother. We're appreciative of Dr. Waldron and especially his new book, latest book, The Doctrine of Last Things.

Yeah.

Free Grace Press, grateful for that. And, but there's been many ways that Dr. Waldron has been impactful to me in theology. And so helpful. And I'll just go ahead and let's just segue right into it. One of the ways, Dr. Waldron, I don't know that I've read anything by him on this, but I know I've listened to some podcasts that he's done before on this.

And that's what we're talking about today, The Doctrine of the Christian Sabbath. And I'm trying to control this podcast where, I mean, we could spend hours talking about this, but let's just kind of weigh into it here.

We'll let Jonathan, you go first, and Landon, you can shore up any areas you want to of what he says, but could you just lay for us, like just a, I'm not gonna give you a timeframe, but just a brief defense or explanation.

Maybe somebody's listening to this, Christian Sabbath, how can you have a Christian Sabbath? What do you mean by that? And what is your defense of that? So you go, and then Jonathan or Landon, you be listening and you fill in some things you'd like to shore up with whatever he says.

So I'll steal this from Owen, John Owen. John Owen does a tremendous job laying a foundation for the reason for a Christian Sabbath. And what he says is that everyone who claims Christianity knows that it's right to gather together to worship the Lord weekly.

So we all have that in us. We all know that, that is our practice. And so he asked the question, then where does it come from? And if we ask the question, where does it come from? We have to trace it back to Genesis 2, 3.

The Lord blessed the day and made it holy, right? And so you have an institution of the blessing of this day in Genesis 2, 3. But something that Owen does that's very interesting, and it's one of my favorite arguments of him is, and Albert Martin talks about this as well.

He says that people want to reduce the Christian Sabbath to an hour on Sunday mornings. And he says, it's kind of like, they bring their chicken, pop the head off, dump the blood out for an hour and leave, and they're done.

And I've done my hour, now I can go and do whatever I want to do, right? But Owen brings up the issue and he says, we argue from Genesis 1, the word day, six literal 24 hour day periods. And then we get to Genesis 2, 3 and the word day there.

So if we're talking about what a Christian Sabbath, what should be the bounds of our Christian Sabbath? He says, should not that word day also determine the length of what we do? And so when we talk about the Christian Sabbath, we do mean our gathering on Sunday, but we also mean the preparation for that day, right?

And we also mean the observance of the whole day. And so I would say that our observance of the Lord's day, our Christian Sabbath is one that is set apart for God, for worship and for holy meditations, as the Puritans would say.

I really appreciate even our confession. Our confession lays that out very well when it defends the Sabbath. We were here in our church, we read through either the confession or the catechism. And we just read this, I was going to read that here this morning.

In question 66, sorry, 65, how is the Sabbath to be sanctified, right? So if we take that back to that Genesis 2, 3 account, the Lord blessed it and made it holy. Well, then how are we to bless it and make it holy?

How are we to sanctify it? And our catechism says the Sabbath is to be sanctified by a holy resting all that day. And they don't mean a nap time, though you can take a nap, right? I mean, you can rest physically, but it's a resting from our toil in this world, a resting from the preoccupations of this world and a resting in Christ, even from such worldly employments and recreations as are lawful on other days, and spending the whole time in public and private exercises of God's worship, except so much as to be taken up in the works of necessity and mercy.

So I love that.

I love how they define that. And so I think that would be the bounds by which I would say this is the Christian Sabbath.

Yeah, that's good. I want to make one comment and then I'm going to turn it over to Landon. He's been thinking and ready to lay it on us, but in Owen's argument, and I think it's a fascinating argument.

I think it's actually, I think it's an inescapable argument.

Yeah, absolutely.

God, who determines the time of when we worship?

Yeah, yeah, right.

It's either God determines that time or you determine that time. If you say, if God determines that time, then what is it? Or you have to just go with it like, okay, well, I just determined that time.

Yeah, right.

Okay, so there's a few things, just going to be clarity, because I know there'll probably be some people listening to this that not even 100 sure still what we're talking about. So, you've mentioned Genesis, and of course the Sabbath day there is the seventh day.

So we're not talking about that, but Landon, why don't you just kind of, I mean, we are talking about that, but it's not the seventh day anymore. So Landon, why don't you just kind of weigh in and add some of your own thoughts here as we're just kind of weighing in on like, okay, what is the Christian Sabbath?

Yeah, so I think foundationally, kind of like what John is saying, I think when you first see the institution of the Sabbath in Genesis two, and Jesus alludes to this in Mark 2 27, the Sabbath was made for man and not man, Sabbath.

I mean, I would ask both you brothers, like when you hear the word Sabbath, not when you heard the word Sabbath 15 years ago or 20 years ago, but today when you hear the word Sabbath, what is your initial couple of words?

Like what comes to your mind?

I mean, rest comes to, I mean, I think about rest, worship, Christ.

Yeah.

There's a few words that come to my mind immediately.

Gift.

I just read a book by Lewis Bailey, The Practice of Piety, and it was a manual on piety. He was an Anglican, but he was a Puritan Anglican. And he says, when he said in that book, he said, when a Christian dies, it's not something new because he's died to himself his whole life.

But he says, when he dies, all he's doing is resting from his work in this world. So the Christian lives with his mind in heaven, right? So set your mind on things that are above. So I think in the same sense, when I think of the Sabbath, I think about raptured.

So we can live in heaven now through hope. And so I think when I think about, when I hear the word Sabbath, it is the leaving this world and exiting the world for a day, in a sense. And typologically, it's me in hope, being with the Lord Jesus Christ.

And we live in two kingdoms and we're pilgrims here. And on that day, we don't have to live in this kingdom. In hope, because of the Lord Jesus Christ, through the means of grace, we're exited from this world.

And that, I mean, that kind of alludes to, or continues to answer that question. Like, I think all three of us, when we think about the Sabbath, are thinking of it as a blessing from God and a gift. And a delight.

And a way that we as creatures are given a time to worship our God. But I think, Alan, to answer your question, like, for the idea of a Christian Sabbath, where does that come from? Well, it comes from the 10 Commandments.

The Decalogue gives us, in short form, a picture of God's moral law that has its basis in who God is and his consistency in what he demands of man. Again, our confession, chapter 19, paragraph two, says the same law that was first written in the heart of man continued to be a perfect rule of righteousness after the fall, was delivered by God upon Mount Sinai.

And 10 Commandments are written in two tables, the first four containing our duty towards God, and the other six, our duty to man. So if we recognize that man has a duty toward God in the first four, the fourth is giving us a time to worship.

And that's the moral foundation of why the Sabbath is obligatory. But I think because we all, I'm sure you guys are like me, grew up in very dispensational waters to where when you hear the word Sabbath, you're like, it tells me what I can't do on my day.

But that's really the substance of the Decalogue, particularly the first table, is it's giving us our obligation to God. Like what ought we to do?

Yeah. Okay, so let me just give my brief defense and then you guys can weigh in. But in Genesis two, you have several institutions. For example, you have marriage and Christ is the fulfillment of marriage, right?

Ephesians five. The marriage is simply a picture of Christ in the church. And so you don't, but you don't look at Genesis two and say, well, okay, well, there's marriage. Okay, it's ultimately pointing Christ in church.

Christ has fulfilled that. So let's do away with marriage, right? Like, no, I mean, nobody makes an argument unless you're a cult leader or something, you know? And typically those guys say, let's do away with marriage, except all your wives can be mine.

You know, that's David Koresh or whatever. Okay, there's also work, you know, and Christ is the fulfillment of work. Christ is the end of work, yet we don't do away with vocation, you know? And similarly in Genesis two, you have the establishment of the doctrine of the Sabbath, which I would argue that it's moral and that it's positive and moral, okay?

Positive being on, by that, I mean, it's on the seventh day. That's a positive, it's not required. I mean, so that's why we're gonna talk about the shift in just a minute. So anyway, you have all that, you get in, I don't have my Bible in front of me right now, but you get into Genesis four and you have in Genesis four, it says, you know, that Cain and Abel came and brought their offerings.

But if you look at the Hebrew, it says, like at the end of days, they brought their offering. And so that's interesting, isn't it? Like, I'm not gonna stay a long time there, but it's possible that it means at the end of the week, right, they came on the Sabbath day and brought their offering because that was what Adam, their father, had taught them.

But more conclusive evidence than that is when you get to Genesis 26 about Abraham, God says that Abraham has obeyed my laws and my commandments. Okay, what commandments, right? This is prior, let's just remind ourselves that Genesis is prior to the giving of the law in Sinai.

So what commandments does Abraham obey? Well, I would argue, I mean, and obviously, we're not talking about he obeys like Christ obeys, talking about he follows the moral law, that this is, that it's the moral law is a reality prior to Sinai, that's what I'm arguing.

Anyway, so then, you know, lots more arguments we can make, but then in the New Testament, there is a lie that is kind of going on in the world today. They probably don't mean it. I'm talking about our Christian brothers.

They don't mean it when they say this, it just gets repeated a lot, that the fourth commandment is never mentioned in the New Testament.

What?

Okay, they probably don't understand one in Mark two, what. Landon, you've already brought up, the Sabbath was made for man, right? Not Israel, by the way, but for man. It's a gift, not just to Israel.

It's a gift to mankind. It's a gift made.

In creation.

Yeah, in creation. And then of course, an important passage, which Jonathan, I know you're preaching through Hebrew, so you may want to speak more to this, but in Hebrews four, there remains a Sabbath rest for the people of God.

So the fourth commandment is mentioned in the New Testament. Clearly in the New Testament, they switch from their seventh day meeting to their first day, to a first day gathering. In Revelation one, John calls it the Lord's day.

So it had become in the early Christian church, this day, this Christian Sabbath had been known, had became known as the Lord's day. And you know this, Jonathan and Landon, I'm sure you know it as well, but the word Lord is used as an adjective two times and all the New Testaments use an adjective two times.

One, it's in first Corinthians 11. It's speaking of his supper, the Lord's supper. Secondly, it's speaking of the Lord's day. So all meals are God's, but he has a special supper. All days are God's, but he has a special day.

The Sabbath, the Christian Sabbath, which is the first day of the week.

Why?

Because it's on that day that Jesus Christ rose again from the dead.

I don't know.

So anyway, there's just like my little hints there and it's what we're talking about.

There's really a beauty here in what you mentioned, Alan, because Meredith Klein, I was reading a book by him the other day and he pointed out, he made the argument, he believes that Adam and Eve sinned on the Sabbath, on the first Sabbath day.

John Flavel makes the same argument. And then they're clothed, right, on that same day. But if we look throughout the nation of Israel, you have one of their most important festivals is the Feast of Booths or the Feast of Tabernacles.

And, you know, Pastor Randall points this out. Pastor Randall Easter points this out. 400 years, they're in Egypt and they don't get a day off. And then they come to the wilderness and he says, I'm gonna give you one in seven.

Like, it's not a bad thing, right? I mean, like one in seven, you get a day off, right? But if we look at the idea of the Feast of Booths or Feast of Tabernacles, they're in the desert and they would take these palm branches or green branches and they would make these little booths.

And so they're out in the hot sun all day and they would have seven weeks of celebration before this. The Feast of Tabernacles or Booths was the seventh week. And they would just gorge themselves as they sat in these little booths, right?

So these little hut things and everything would be green. So they would be looking up and seeing green and it was just a joyful time. But at the end of that, they would have a Sabbath of Sabbaths on the eighth day.

And it would be the end of their celebration. And they would just celebrate. I mean, it was huge. The most food and everything. And it was a looking forward to the eighth day. And it was typified, right?

That's what we see. It was the type of why we call it the Lord's Day now.

Right?

So it was a type. But then we get to the New Testament and you're right. It's changed to the eighth day.

The eighth day. That's a good word. The eighth day.

Eighth day.

Yeah.

And it's typical of what we're looking forward to. So if we look at the Lord's Supper, it's a type. We come to the table and we say, until he returns, we remember him here. Because one day we are going to feast on him forever in heaven.

One day we're going to sit down with him and enjoy the communion face-to-face, seeing him as he is, right? In the same way, we meet on the eighth day as a type. Because when we get there, the sun flees, the moon flees, earth is no more, the sea is no more.

And it's one day. There is no sun. And it's the eighth day. And it's one long celebration. There is no temple. Christ is a temple. The door is always open, it says. It's never shut. We're brought in and we're eternally with Christ in the consummation of his kingdom on the eighth day for all eternity.

So every time we come on Sunday morning, that should be our attitude. That's what's being typified. That's what we're to sell. So it's not, there is negative things. There is things we, you know, our confession, you don't do this, right?

Our catechism, don't do this. What is it? The fourth commandment prohibit, right? We have negative commands. But we also must look at the positive commands. This is why we don't. So I don't have to go to Walmart on the Lord's day because I don't have to deal with those people.

I get to get raptured into eternity for a day in hope, looking forward to Christ. And I don't have to deal with the things of this world, only acts of necessity and mercy, right?

Amen.

Landon, do you have, oh, let me ask you this first. You like Lord of the Rings?

Absolutely.

So I

Let me ask you this, let me inject. Lord of the Rings or Narnia?

Oh, no, that's, to me, it's not even close.

What did you say, Landon?

I said, well, for me, I prefer Lord of the Rings to Narnia.

I love Lord of the Rings.

Yeah.

I'm the other way around. I enjoyed the Hobbit, I enjoyed the Cimmerillion, and I couldn't stand the Lord of the Rings trilogy.

Well, the point I'm gonna make is, if you read the Bible without a healthy understanding of typology, then you're saying somebody like J .R .R. Tolkien is a better author than the Lord of the Rings.

Right, right, right, right.

But if you read the Bible in understanding typology, and again, we put guardrails, you can't go crazy, you know?

Right, right, right.

If you read the Bible and you understand typology, then the Bible, in my opinion, is even all the more beautiful. It's like a hermeneutical

Yeah, right.

But anyway, Landon, we've kind of been chatting a lot, so all that we've been talking about, how do you, what do you wanna, anything you wanna add or say? I've got some things, but go ahead.

Yeah, well, I think just to pick back up on the importance of the Sabbath as a creation ordinance, you mentioned that in marriage and labor and those institutions we see, and I think that the hermeneutical principle, as far as whole Bible, is like, you see, these things are instituted prior to the fall.

Yeah.

And I think that's where Genesis 227 becomes so important, or I'm sorry, Mark 227 becomes so important. The Sabbath is made for man. It's not something that comes into place after the fall, or even at Sinai.

It's something that God bakes into His creation pattern as something good, like marriage. And in the New Testament, this is constantly alluded to. You know, when Jesus is asked about divorce in Mark 10 6, I guess Jesus responds.

He says, from the beginning, it was not so, and God created them male and female. So you see the creation ordinance as the foundation for what marriage is. But also when you get to the New Testament, and you see that marriage typifies Christ and His bride, even after the ascension, and the advent of the new covenant, marriage does not cease.

Like people still marry. We don't not get married because we're married to Christ. And labor doesn't cease, and the Sabbath doesn't cease. It still holds in place because it's a creation ordinance, and it binds all of created time.

And if you really define, I think, from Genesis 2, what the Sabbath is, like Jonathan just mentioned, the Sabbath is God entering His eternal rest.

Yeah, yeah.

There's no evening. So the Sabbath formally begins when God enters His rest, and His eternal rest is the Sabbath. So to say in the new covenant, the Sabbath has somehow been realized, and every day is the same because we are, because Christ is our Sabbath rest, in the sense that every day is the same, it would be the same thing as saying, well, we don't need to be married anymore because Christ is our husband.

We don't obliterate God's creation ordinances because salvation has been realized. But that's where it becomes so important to see the distinction between the law and the gospel.

Mm-hmm.

Like the law gives us God's demand for righteousness, and Christ has fulfilled that. So if you take God's law and remove its moral component and say that's been realized, we really take away from the work that Christ has completed.

Like Christ fulfilled the Sabbath to its perfection. So that means every Saturday, as was His pattern, right, in the gospels, He would go to the synagogue on the seventh day, or we see that in like Psalm 92, a day for the Sabbath worship, right?

That's right there in the subscript. The content of Psalm 92, and listen to this, and this is in the Old Covenant.

It's beautiful, yeah.

Sing praises to your name, O Most High, to declare your loving kindness in the morning and your faithfulness by night. You think of the Hebrews singing the joy of the Sabbath in the Old Covenant. Well, Christ fulfilled perfectly out of love for God.

He fulfilled the Sabbath perfectly just like the rest of the law on our behalf. So I think to all the, any critique that the Sabbath is somehow some kind of a legalistic, they're misunderstanding the function of the Sabbath.

It's a, to break the Sabbath is an act of, or to break the Sabbath is an act of omission. It's not honoring it. It's not remembering it.

Yeah, I would even argue that even in the garden, the Sabbath is our recompense. So you have, like you said, creation, like Landon just said, creation, God creates man and gives him a task. Be fruitful and multiply.

The moral law we know is written on Adam's heart, right? So he has the law of God written on his heart. Then he has positive commands, be fruitful, multiply, don't eat from the tree, dominate the earth, right?

So even if he doesn't eat from the tree, his recompense isn't fulfilled or isn't given until he dominates the whole world and fills the earth, right? So it's not just not eating from the tree. He has to fill the whole earth and dominate it before he gets his recompense.

Where is his recompense? It's eternal with God, and that is what is typified by the day. And so, you know, we have two things. We have a moral obligation, you know, clearly in the law, and we have a joy and a delight.

And we should see both of those in Christ. You know, Alan brought up Hebrews 4 .9, the remains for us, a Sabbath rest. That is what we're looking forward to. That's what we celebrate every time we come together, that this isn't our home.

The reason that we don't go to the store, right? That we make provisions so we don't have to. Look, sometimes we do. Sometimes we have to. Sometimes there's an act of necessity and we have to. But the reason we try not to isn't just so we can say, well, I didn't go to the store today.

I'm better than you. But so we can say, so that we look forward to the day we're not part of this world, right? And so we're looking forward for that. And so I agree, brother. I don't know.

Yeah, I wanna say too, there's a theological purpose in the Sabbath, in the moving too, from the seventh day to the first day. In the seventh day, it ties in with the covenant of works in Genesis 2. And essentially it's, okay, Adam, if you work, you're going to enter the rest.

But now it's the first day of the week.

Why?

Because Jesus has completed the work. And so now the first thing that we do is we enter into the rest. We enter into Christ. And then as a result, we're going to, as Ephesians 2, eight and nine says, you know, eight through 10, that we know the first part by grace, you've been saved through faith.

And this is gift of God, not of works, lest any man should boast. And then verse 10, you know, you're created in Christ Jesus for good works. So our pattern is not work and then enter the rest. Our pattern is we've entered the rest.

Now we work. So there's a theological significance. I also wanna just go back and make this explicit. This is gonna be a terrible, terrible analogy, but I bring it to the table in order to make a point.

And that is, if you look at your wife and you say, hey, I'm gonna have an affair this weekend because Jesus has completed the seventh commandment, right? So the seventh commandment, thou shall not commit adultery, that is fulfilled.

Christ has kept it for us. Therefore, by the logic of some of our new covenant theology brethren or dispensational brethren as well, the logic is, well, that's been fulfilled. So now I can just go live this way.

Well, it's like, no, nobody, again, unless you're a cult leader or a heretic, nobody's gonna make that argument. And the same applies for the first four commandments. And particularly in this podcast episode, it applies for the fourth commandment.

There is a moral obligation. Christ has fulfilled the fourth commandment, yet there remains a moral obligation for us to follow this because the law of God, Jeremiah 31 promises, the law of God is written on our hearts.

Amen.

Any response there?

Yeah, and you talked about our rest and resting in Christ and His finished work. The joy of that. You know, yes, He fulfilled the law for me. That doesn't mean that I don't obey, but it's interesting in Ezekiel, no, Jeremiah, Jeremiah 31 and Hebrews eight, the new covenant is laid out.

You have, it says there, I'll write their laws upon my heart. I'll write my laws upon their heart, but they're already written on our heart. So it's strange. Why are they now rewritten? It's because we now have a new relationship.

We're not in a covenant of works. We're trying to fulfill them for our justification, but we're resting on the finished work of Christ. There's one thing I love about our confession. If you read the chapter 11 on justification, beautiful definition of justification.

And it ends there saying that the passive and active obedience of Christ is given to us, right? And then the next paragraph starts like this paragraph two. It says faith, thus receiving and resting on Christ and his righteousness.

If you ask me what we're doing on the Sabbath, on the Christian Sabbath, we're coming in and we're receiving and resting on Christ. We're, we are coming in and saying he has done everything. I just get to enjoy it.

I get to take delight in it. But so we've, we've argued positively. Let me, let me bring up a question. I think, I think it needs to be asked. Why not? Give me a good reason not to enjoy the Sabbath.

I'll start with Landon.

So from my perspective, you're saying every day I have to go and I have to deal with things in this world. I have to live in a kingdom that's not my home. I have to deal with vanity fair every day. But you're going to tell me one day I don't have to.