Deuteronomy

Guarding the Lord’s Day

Professor: Dr. R.J. Rushdoony

Subject: Pentateuch

Lesson: 16-110

Genre: Talk

Track: 016

Dictation Name: RR187H16

Location/Venue:

Year: 1993

Let us worship God. Give unto the Lord all ye kindreds of the people. Give unto the Lord glory and strength. Give unto the Lord the glory due unto His name, bring an offering and come into His courts. Oh worship the Lord in the beauty of holiness. Fear before Him all the earth. Let us pray.

Almighty God our heavenly Father we come again into Thy presence joyful in all mercies and blessings. Joyful that in a troubled world we have the assurance that is Thy word that shall prevail. That even the wrath of man shall serve Thee. Give us grace therefore day by day to walk in the confidence of Thy victory, of Thy purpose and of Thy calling. In Christ’s name, Amen.

Our scripture is Deuteronomy 5:12-15. Our subject: Guarding the Lord’s Day. Deuteronomy 5:12-15.

[INSERT SCRIPTURE HERE]

As we have seen in other contexts the Sabbath is essentially a day of rest. Worship should be a constant attitude and stance of the Christian man. The Sabbath is one day in seven, one year in seven and the fiftieth year. It means a cessation of work, of debt and of planning because it is the affirmation that God is the governor of all things and His care is unending, it is ceaseless. Now the calendar year is a fact of nature. Less strictly, the month too is related to a natural fact, even though the month is not for us strictly lunar or in terms of the moon. We associate the seasons of the year with the months, spring, summer, winter, fall, but the weeks have no such context. One scholar has written that the week is an artificial, man-made interval.

We would say instead that the week is god-ordained. This being the case, the need for Sabbath rest is also god-ordained. The Sabbath and rest have been in the twentieth century something that has been supplanted by leisure. The oxford English dictionary in its main definition for leisure says it is time which one can spend as one pleases. Now there is an assumption in that definition, mainly that work is not what one pleases to do and also that the goal of living is to enjoy a life of leisure. Now that’s a revolution in the outlook of man. Leisure is time that one spends as one pleases. And work therefore is what one does not please to do. Now that defines this century. And the modern idea of retirement is an aspect of this. This means that dominion is not man’s calling but rather that leisure is the goal. Such an idea is the product of anti-Christian intellectual revolution. In fact as one scholar has said very baldly, in contemporary Western societies, leisure has become an antidote to work. Along with this is the idea of going away to rest. That too is very modern and very strongly humanistic. Now perhaps it has a justification that in going away to rest you get away from the telephone. In terms of the bible, man’s calling is to exercise dominion and to subdue the earth as priest, king and prophet under God and Christ. Man dedicates his work and its results to God, rules over his fear under Christ and applies God’s law word to every sphere as God’s prophet.

The satisfaction of rest is in part to enjoy the success of our work under God. But in leisure the goal is to escape from responsibility into an era and an area where no duty escapes. That’s why the goal of modern man and of Marx is a work free society. Man’s substitute Sabbath, leisure time, means time away from duties and responsibilities, not a joyful rest in the confidence of accomplishment. So the modern idea of utopia has been a work free world. A responsibility free world. A world of permanent childishness. Rest and leisure then are not the same and ironically as a scholar has pointed out men now work at their leisure activities. People used to play tennis, now they work on their backhand. They transferred the language of work to the language of play. All of this is very, very important to the subject of the Sabbath. The French revolution created a secular week. Earlier Votar had written and the French revolution applied his idea, that if you wish to destroy the Christian religion you must destroy the Christian Sunday and that is exactly what the French revolution with its secular week proceeded to do. Was Votare correct in saying so? Well the destruction of the Christian Sunday removes the rest and the triumph from dominion work. A modern doctrine of progress now virtually gone is a secular form of the Christian doctrine of providence. The doctrine of providence had its major attention and development in Calvinistic circles. It asserts the total government, care and direction of all creation by the triune God. At one time the doctrine had its various subheads and stresses, now the general doctrine is barely remembered.

For example, Charles Buck whose dates are 1771 to 1815. In his theological dictionary wrote and I quote, because this gives you an idea of how thoroughly developed the doctrine was:

“Providence has been divided into immediate and mediate, ordinary and extraordinary, common and special, universal and particular. Immediate providence is what is exercised by God Himself without the use of any instrument or second cause. Mediate providence is what is exercised in the use of means. Ordinary providence is what is exercised in the common course of means and by the chain of second causes. Extraordinary is what is out of the common way, as miraculous operations. Common providence is what belongs to the whole world, special is what relates to the church. Universal relates to the general upholding and preserving of all things. Particular relates to individuals in every action and circumstance.” Unquote.

Men were once familiar with all of that. Now even in Calvinistic churches one rarely hears the word providence. The doctrine states that nothing happens apart from outside of, or without God. It declares that God is indeed totally God and all things are totally his creation. Accident, chance and fortune cannot exist in God’s creation. The doctrine of providence means that despite all appearances we are on the winning side as God’s people. God works and through all things to accomplish His sovereign purpose. Now in terms of this, the Lord’s Day is a time of rest from our labors in the serene confidence that our work shall in God’s providence prevail. Paul wrote to the Corinthians, therefor my beloved brethren, be steadfast unmovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord for as much as He knows your labor is not in vain in the Lord. Now, that faith in providence that nothing we do no matter what the world does to try and destroy in it is never in vain. It will have an eternal consequence. But in time and eternity will work together for good. That sustained people, that enabled them to rest. Israel is reminded in this commandment of their deliverance from bondage in Egypt. That total deliverance requires now a total rest. Their servants and their animals must alike rest because they are God’s people they must give rest to all that are with them and under them. The Sabbaths related to God’s providence because it is God who by His grace gives us salvation, the confidence in His ability to make all things work together for good and therefore gives us the ability to rest. It is a day when we rest not only from our work but also from our cares. There can be no true rest if we are fretful and anxious about a variety of things. Now the word keep is very much important in this context. Keep the Sabbath day we are told and in the Hebrew literally it means guard the Sabbath day. Hedge it about. It is to be guarded and prized as a precious and valuable thing, even as the Garden of Eden was hedged and guarded.

Same word. Votare at this point may have been wiser than many, many churchmen. Guarding the Christian Sunday means guarding its meaning and purpose, the triumph of Christ over all things. It is a weekly reminder of the great proclamation of Revelation 11:15: “The kingdoms of this world are become the kingdoms of our Lord and his Christ and he shall reign forever and ever.” The world of leisure is that of statism and irresponsibility. A play replaces work and man’s goal is to escape work and duty. Curiously, the enemies of the Christian Sunday have commercialized the day and made rest more difficult for more and more people. The goal of course is not rest but play. The name Sunday retains the old Roman emphasis on the sun god and this term is with variations in English, German, Dutch, the Scandinavian languages and in Hindu culture. The Italians, French, Spanish, Portuguese’s and Gaelic use forms of the Latin ‘Dominica’ referring thereby to the Lord. In English the puritan use of the term Lord’s Day has been very largely supplanted. We are to keep or guard the Sabbath day to sanctify it. To make it holy, separated to rest under God. This is a commandment from God. There is an interesting side light on the neglect of the Lord’s Day in the twentieth century. In 1919 [unknown name] published a paper entitled Sunday Neurosis. For a time it was much discussed and then quietly shoved under the carpet. Sunday, wrote [unknown name] was a day when modern man felt free from his duties and compulsions to be himself and to act as he pleased. Many however found their liberation to be a troubling one. In one case described in the report by [unknown] involving a Jew the symptoms appeared on Friday evening. He was not as liberated as he thought. With some headaches and even vomiting marked their liberated Sabbath or Lord’s Day. Liberated man is never as free as he thinks; his liberation is too often from manhood and responsibility. Let us pray.

Our Lord and our God we give thanks unto Thee that Thou hast in Christ made it possible for us to rest. To take hands of our lives and to commit them into Thy keeping. Forgive us when in our folly we try to take back control, when we feel that our fretfulness will accomplish more than Thy providence. Give us grace to rest in Thee. In Christ’s name, Amen.

Are there any questions now about our lesson? Yes?

[Question] Well I think part of the problem is that work is identified with slavery.

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Same man] I, and very many people and it certainly was in the minds of pagans. And when the aristocracy declined, when it abandoned its responsibility it began to use leger as play.

[Rushdoony] Yes, our Lord says that if he does not make you free you are a slave. So naturally the slave as you so well pointed out is going to see work as slavery. And he winds up seeing life as slavery. So, [unknown] pointed out in a book on the subject that modern man increasingly sees life as slavery and is suicidal. And he traced the loss of faith to the rise of suicidism. Yes?

[Question] Since there have been numerous calendars down through the ages is it really important which seventh day you choose for a Sabbath?

[Rushdoony] The Sabbath of the Old Testament was on the day of their deliverance, the day of Passover. When God set them apart to be saved. It was a day in terms of the day of the month not the day of the week, so it varied just as your birthday varies. The Christian Sabbath is on the day of resurrection so it’s been always celebrated in almost every church on the day of resurrection, the first day of the week. There have been in history different weeks, that is since it is a religious fact not a natural fact like the moon and year especially there have been eight day weeks, ten day weeks in various cultures and no weeks.

[Man speaks] So then it’s possible to determine whether or not our calendar, our frozen calendar, Sunday is then the true Christian Sunday?

[Rushdoony] Yes, at the very beginning the early church observed the Lord’s resurrection day as the Sabbath and they were very strict in Sabbath calculations as the Hebrew had been before in calculating their calendar and that’s why calendar reform was instituted very early by Christians, the Gregorian calendar after Saint Gregory. Because the observance of the Sabbath was very important. The calendar was last adjusted to be accurate in the time of George Washington. I don’t know when it will be due for a correction again. Any other questions or comments?

IF not, let us bow our heads in prayer.

Our Lord and our God we give thanks unto Thee that in Jesus Christ we do have rest. That in him our work is not futility but valid for time and eternity. That our lives are not vain but have a glorious and an eternal purpose. We thank Thee our father that Thou hast by Thy grace and mercy transferred us to the world of emptiness and meaninglessness into the world of Thy meaning, Thy life. And now go in peace, God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Ghost, bless you and keep you, guide and protect you, this day and always, Amen.