Covenant Presbyterian Church

It seems to me that the church has missed the boat on the seeker-friendly movement. The world is not seeking the church; to affirm this turns the Bible’s theology and anthropology upside down and denies the explicit teaching of our Savior. God is the only seeker of the lost; none seek him - him, the true God, not a God of man’s imagination, feeling, or longing. And man’s seeking of the idols of his heart is not a stepping stone to seeking the true God. No, I think the seeker-friendly movement, since it has been generated within the church, is evidence that we are dissatisfied, seeking for something to fill the void of our emptiness and unshakable feeling of uselessness.

This has voluminous secondary evidence. Peruse any Christian bookstore. One is amazed by the smorgasbord of offerings - try this, try that, this has worked for me, use this program, follow this method. It seems to me that the entirety of my local Christian bookstore - minus s few shelves in the back corner that contain a few sound commentaries - has become a children’s bookstore. A candy store for confused, spiritual seekers. As the confectioners learned a long time ago, you cannot simply sell sugar. You must dress it up, color it, add a few interesting flavors, and give your offerings delectable names. This is the same method pursued by most Christian writers and publishers today, not to mention churches. Not much solid and less of substance and relevance is being offered. Yet, a catchy title, splashy cover, and hefty endorsements may create a bestseller that will keep consumers interested, at least for a few months.

There are many reasons for the spiritual infancy and distractedness of the modern church, a condition that is all the more surprising given our wealth, access to Christian literature, buffet of programs, and media wizardry. There is one, I think, that is at the heart of them all: a failure to keep the Sabbath day holy. This is the day our heavenly Father loves that we do not. This is an activity in which he engages, but we pursue halfheartedly, if at all. This is something holy that we have profaned.

I used to think that if believers could simply be persuaded of the ongoing duty of keeping the Sabbath holy, practice would fall into place. Hence, in the past when I have written on the subject, my attempts have been to show the abundant exegetical evidence for the Sabbath, the pre-Mosaic observances of the Sabbath by God-fearing men and women, the Mosaic "reminder" of the Sabbath, along with certain unique aspects of its observance in Israel that may not be directly applicable today, the prophetic literature promises of universal Sabbath keeping in the days of the Messiah (e.g., Isa. 58), and the teaching of our Savior and his apostles. I reaffirm each aspect of the Bible’s constant refrain: "Keep the Sabbath day holy." The Sabbath was not a Jewish institution or a ceremonial observance that has now passed away with the accomplishment of redemption and establishment of our Savior’s kingdom. It was not one of the types and shadows of the old covenant economy. When Jesus proclaims himself to be "Lord of the Sabbath," he is most definitely not doing so in reference to an observance that is soon to end. The perpetual duty of Sabbath keeping is taught by the author to the Hebrews when he writes, "There remains a Sabbath day keeping for the people of God" (Heb. 4:9). Yet, for all this, most Christians think their Sabbath or Lord’s Day duty complete if they attend a Sunday morning service. The rest of the day is spent pretty much the same as the other days of the week, albeit with a little more guilt and confusion created by the gnawing feeling that I may be doing something wrong.

Ours is not an age of duty. With a few notable individual and group exceptions, I am not sure that any age has been. However much the feelings and principles of any age may differ from another, man is the same in each of them. He does not welcome being told what to do and how to live. Our age, however, is engaged in an ongoing attempt to excise the very notion of obedience or rebellion. This conclusion is reached because we have denied any objective meaning and authority beyond our own experience. Thus, the very notions of obedience, accountability, and rebellion are considered draconian, relics of a past in which religious authority constrained the free development of man’s spirit, i.e., doing what you want when you want. And this spirit has most definitely set up headquarters in the church.

Return to the local bookstore -- very little exposition of Scripture, substantial theological presentation, or serious interaction with the past but a great deal of feeling and emotion, spiritual exuberance, pragmatism, and remaking the church in the image of consumerism. This in itself is evidence that we do not want the restrictions and duties of Scripture to govern our practice. We want freedom to experiment, fulfill our own desires, and find our comfortable place of convenient living, a controllable God with a prosperous life with as few nonnegotiable duties as possible. It is not surprising that the Sabbath, with its command to spend the whole day resting in the completed work of Christ and worshipping God, it prohibition of commerce, and its opportunity to seek the things above, where Christ is and Christ is reigning, would fall upon relatively deaf ears. Our failure to keep the Lord’s Day holy is not due to ignorance but to autonomy; we simply want to do our own thing, and we have been deceived into thinking that our relationship with God is self-definable. As I long as I feel I am doing the right thing, it is the right thing. Of course, I can always fall back upon the Holy Spirit. I feel this way, so he must be leading this way. I am amazed how often we equate what we want to do and even what we are doing with the "leading of the Holy Spirit."

We will always be restless until we rest in God. Personal restlessness, family restlessness, even congregational restlessness will result if we do not rest in God. This is the reason the Sabbath remains so vital for us. While our earthly work and efforts are significant, God’s work in us is vastly more important. In fact, unless the Lord does his renewing, sanctifying, and refreshing work in our lives, we will not be able to do anything of lasting significance. We will be tired, all the time, lacking inner strength and consistency, distracted as children, and skipping from church to church, experience to experience, wondering what is wrong with the church I just left. We cannot "do," however until we "are" -- until we are like God in Jesus Christ, conformed to the image of the Son, filled with love, joy, peace, and integrity or moral wholeness. These are found only in communion with God. It is only as we look at him as he is - majestic and glorious, loving and merciful, holy and pure, as he is revealed to us in his Son, that we are changed, transformed into his glorious image. We cannot do this "on the fly." We can try, but it will result in an image that resembles a child’s coloring book more than the mature work of our wise and powerful Father. Without the Sabbath rest, without the Sabbath looking at the glory of God in face of Jesus Christ - a prolonged, day-long, purposeful, and non-distracted gaze - we will rest content in snippets of piety. We will increasingly depend upon the spiritual experts to "pump us up," without the inner and ongoing transformation and resulting inner stability required to hold them accountable and preserve our own integrity.

Amidst all the vital works our heavenly Father is constantly effecting through the mediatorial reign of his Son and the omnipresent Spirit, there is one in which we can take weekly part: Sabbath rest. The duty is there, to be sure. God never changes. Yet, I would call your attention to the depths of your need to rest in God. You have no strength, no wisdom, and no energy apart from him. Apart from the preaching of his life-giving word, life is tasteless, powerless, and meaningless. Apart from the fellowship of the saints, life is selfish, atomistic, and fragmented. Apart from rest in the finished work of Jesus Christ - a purposeful, worshipful, thoughtful, content-laden, and corporate rest - we will become children, tossed to and fro by every wind and wave of doctrine, unable to resist the world, the flesh, and the devil, and earth-bound in our vision and priorities. God knows you better than you know yourself, child of God. He knows you need him. He gives you one day in seven to have and to hold him, to press his word and promises tightly to your bosom, to lift your care-worn eyes to his eternal kingdom, and to find true, life-defining peace and purpose in him.

Would you be transformed? Would you look upon the everlasting fire, the holy God, by faith? Would you be purged from your sin, delivered from the childishness of our age, set upon stable, holy ground, and empowered to live for God? Would you know the pleasure of communion with the living God, hear the voice of Jesus Christ declaring the name of the Father in the midst of his brothers, and receive fresh impulses of divine grace? Keep the Sabbath holy. There is no other way.