Dial In with Jonny Ardavanis - Sabbath and Rest

Episode Date: March 9, 2023

In this episode, Jonny Ardavanis covers the subject of rest and Sabbath. On a quest of elevating our biblical view of work, it is necessary to understand the rhythm set up for us in Scripture of rest. Men are made from dust, not from steel, therefore the pattern set up for us by God is one of intense work and intentional rest. Furthermore, Jonny answers the question of how believers in a new covenant era are to observe the Sabbath now that the Mosaic covenant has been fulfilled in Christ. Watch VideosVisit the Website Follow on InstagramFollow on Twitter

Hey guys, my name is Johnny Artavanis and this is Dial In. We are in the midst of a series on work and so far in the two previous episodes we have covered a biblical theology of work and then we covered the subject of laziness. If you haven't already, I would encourage you to go back and listen to those two episodes because the content here is going to build off what was already established. I do want to thank you guys for listening and sharing the podcast with others. I'm excited to dive in on this episode, so let's dial in. Genesis wasn't the only creation account of the ancient world. One of the pagan accounts for the beginning of the world was the Enuma Elish from Babylon. In this account, the gods became weary of their work and nagged Marduk,

the king of the gods, to find a solution in order that they would no longer have to work. That's the gods. And Marduk comes up with this genius plan to offload labor onto unfortunate slaves, namely humanity. He says this, I will establish a savage. Man shall be his name. He shall be charged with the service of the gods that they might be at ease. Many of the other creation myths echo a similar sentiment. Homer testifies to the same line of thought in regards to what the Greeks believed. They believed work was a curse laid on them from the gods. It was a divine punishment of sorts from the gods because the gods hated mankind, so they made man work. There are many other examples we could give, but to the pagans,

work was undignified and ignoble. But this couldn't be any more different than the God of the Bible and the Lord of all creation. Work is not beneath him. He enjoys it. God is a working God. Therefore, for us, work is not undignified. It's dignified because we work as image bearers of our creator. It's not ignoble, but rather part of the nobility of what it means to be the vice regents and partners of God. When God created Adam, he didn't place him on a beach. We covered this, but rather in a garden. And it says in Genesis 2.15 that God put Adam in the garden to work it. Adam wasn't manicuring a pristine lawn. He was taming a wilderness. He was subduing, exploring, designing, building, naming the animals. What are you? Giraffe, lion, zebra. And he was planning and organizing. And

this is how God made man to function. You ever get that feeling, man, I want to go do something. Well, that's how God made us. Work is exciting. Now we've covered this much and I've been trying to elevate our biblical view of work. And so far we've covered this theology of work and then laziness. So series is over, right? Wrong. My series would be incomplete and consequently unbiblical if I did not draw our attention to another important category that we find in the opening narrative of scripture. Before I continue, I want you to think for a moment about your calendar. Yes, your calendar. And in doing so, I want to ask you a question. How did we derive the current divisions of time? Meaning this. One year is measured by the Earth's revolution around

the sun. I think I learned that in elementary school or junior high. One month is what? Well, that's the moon cycle. And one day is the Earth's rotation. But have you ever considered where we got the week from? Every society and every economy functions on a seven-day cycle. But why? It's an arbitrary measurement of time that is not fixed to anything that is happening astrologically. So where did we get our seven-day week? Well, at this point, you likely know where I'm going. I'm going to Genesis chapter two. On the sixth day, God made man. And on the seventh day, he what? Well, the beginning of Genesis chapter two tells us. Verse one says, thus the heavens and the earth were completed and all their hosts. By the seventh

day, God completed his work, which he had done. And he rested on the seventh day from all his work, which he had done. Then God blessed the seventh day and sanctified it because in it, he rested from all of his work, which God had created and made all of creation was completed. And on the seventh day, God rested. He did not do so because he was exhausted, but rather because he was finished. He wasn't limping to the finish line, but on the seventh day, he rested in a hands on the hips, look at the mowed lawn kind of way. He rested in order that he might enjoy what he had created. The word rest in Hebrew is sabbat, and it literally means to stop, cease, and to keep. And the language of Genesis 2.2 is particularly interesting. It says that God blessed the seventh day. What does that mean? Well, there are three times in the creation narrative when we read that Yahweh, the king of

creation, gives his blessing. The first of which is in Genesis 1.22, where God saw the animal kingdom that he had made. He declared it good in his sight and then blessed them saying, be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth. The second time God blesses something is in Genesis 1.28. After God makes Adam and Eve in his own image, he blesses them and says to them, be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the animal kingdom. All of this garden is for you to enjoy. The third time we read of God's blessing is on the seventh day. There is no specific blessing that is attached like the two times before, but from this we can deduce that rest shares this similar ability to fill the earth with God's goodness. The animals and mankind were blessed

that they might fill the earth and testify to their creator's kindness. And rest does the same. Rest is not the unfortunate addendum to what God had done, but rather a celebration of his goodness and a commemoration to always remember who he is as king, creator, and friend. Another thing to observe in Genesis 2,3 is that God not only blessed this seventh day, but he did something else. He sanctified it. The ESV translation says that God made the seventh day holy. This is the first time we read of holiness in scripture. And interestingly, the first thing God makes holy is time, the seventh day. To make something holy means that it is set apart. It is altogether different. So before the first week of planet earth comes to a close,

God wants us to understand that this seventh day isn't just another day. It's a special day. It's a holy day. Later on in the New Testament, and we will return to this later, Jesus says that the Sabbath was a gift for man, meaning that for Adam and Eve in the garden, this seventh day was not a duty, but a delight that their kind and benevolent king had given to them. It was to be celebrated as a weekly holiday that they might celebrate their creator, cease from their work and walk with God

in the cool of the day. It was a day of rest and worship where they could enjoy God's creation, marvel at his lavish provision and bask in his love. From page two of your Bible and consequently page two of history, man was made to understand that they were not made to work 24 seven, but at most 24 six6. God made Adam from the dust and this seventh day served as a reminder that we are men, not machines. We are made from dust, not from steel. So to be clear, 2,000 years before God gives Moses the law, here in the garden, God establishes a rhythm of rest that is built into the fabric of his world. Rest and work are not enemies, but rather, biblically speaking, they are companions. They belong together. A.W. Tozer once said, and I've referenced this line

before, it takes a whole Bible to make a whole Christian. And on a quest of elevating our view of work, we can never forget that we are creatures made by a creator who rested. Now, fast forward a bit. Okay, maybe two millennia. The fall of man has fractured the cosmos through Adam's sin. Sin reigns and death abounds. And in the book of Exodus, we find the descendants of Abraham, the people of God enslaved in Egypt. And after 400 years of bondage, Yahweh displays his great power and rescues and redeems his people from slavery through his servant Moses. In Exodus, God leads Moses up the mountain after this Exodus and gives to him the 10 commandments, the fourth and longest of which we find in Exodus chapter 20 verses eight through 11 read, remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy. Six days you shall labor and do all your work, but the seventh day is a Sabbath of the Lord your God. In it you shall not do any work, you or your

son or your daughter, your male or your female servant, or your cattle or your sojourner who stays with you. For in six days the Lord made the heavens and the earth, the sea and all that is in them, and rested on the seventh day. Therefore the Lord blessed the seventh day and made it holy. God gives his people a clear command that the day he had marked as set apart in the garden is a day that his people are to set apart in their week. They are to cease from work and mirror and mimic their creator who rested on the seventh day. Now, I want to take a brief tour with you for a moment, and I want to give you a little bit of theology regarding the Sabbath. In the Old Testament, God makes covenants with his people. A covenant is when a divine sovereign makes a promise to a lesser,

more needy group of people. And this is what God does with Israel over and over again. And these covenants have signs. The sign of the covenant that God made with Noah was a what? It was a rainbow. The sign of the covenant God made with Abraham was what? Circumcision. And the sign of the covenant that God made with Israel was the Sabbath, meaning that the Sabbath was the weekly reminder of God's promise to bless the Israelites and also a jogging of their own memory to recall what God had done in choosing, loving, rescuing, and redeeming them as a people. Consider Exodus 31, 16, where it says, so the sons of Israel shall observe the Sabbath to celebrate the Sabbath throughout their generations

as a perpetual covenant. It is a sign, this is key language, between me and the sons of Israel forever. For in six days, the Lord made heaven and earth, but on the seventh day, he rested from labor and was refreshed. So the Sabbath was a sign of a few things. It was a sign of God's faithfulness to rescue and redeem his people.

But not only that, it was a weekly reminder, a weekly bulletin that was given to the people that God is a promise-keeping God. And therefore, the promises he has made regarding a coming Savior were still in effect because he always keeps his promises. So what God had modeled in the garden becomes a law in the 10 commandments because it was a sign of his covenant with his people. And there was to be great blessing to those who kept the Sabbath and great punishment to those who dishonored the Sabbath, to those who didn't keep the Sabbath holy. Now, when is the Sabbath treated in an unholy manner? God keeps on saying this, treat the Sabbath holy. So when is it treated in an unholy manner? Well, very simply,

when it is treated as any other day. Now, in order for the Sabbath to be kept, every other day of the week needs to be viewed differently, especially the sixth day, meaning that the seventh day isn't just some crash landing. You don't just arrive at the Sabbath. It must be prepared for in order for it to be experienced correctly. A heart and mind of worship and rest necessitates and requires preparation. In Exodus 16, the people of God are wandering in the wilderness and God provides for them by giving them manna that fell from the sky. Manna literally meant, what is this? And these wafer-esque provisions were to be collected by God every single day, except one, the Sabbath. Exodus 16, 22 says, now on the sixth day, they gathered twice as much bread and they

were to bake what they needed to bake and boil what they needed to boil for both the sixth and seventh day. Exodus 16, 29, it says, see, the Lord has given you the Sabbath. Therefore, he gives you bread for two days on the sixth day. Remain every man in his place. Let no man go out of his place and on the seventh day. So the people rested on the seventh day. So the people rested on the seventh day. Sabbath was not just a day where people stopped working, but a day where

they were to worship God by practically expressing their trust and dependence upon God to provide for their every need. The Sabbath was a weekly sermon that they were forced to preach to themselves, to their families, and to their fellow man. God can meet my every need, and he provides for me without me. I work six days, and on the seventh, I rest, and I trust in his provision. So to recap, so far the Sabbath day was a day to cease from working, to rest and recharge by enjoying the fruits of our labor, to remember what God has done and to celebrate and delight in his kindness, to express our dependence and trust in God to provide for our every need. And it was a day of worship to tune our hearts to God's holiness, his grace and his mercy. It's not just a day of relaxation. It was

a day of worship. Okay. Because this is a podcast and not a book, maybe one day stay tuned. We need to jump forward approximately 1500 years between, between the time of Moses and Jesus of Nazareth. Because at this point we have blended the creation narrative of rest and the model our maker sets before us in a seven day rhythm with that of the Jewish Sabbath, which as we have said, was a sign of the covenant that God had established with his people. That's Exodus 31, remember? God says the Sabbath was a sign between him and the sons of Israel and the Mosaic covenant. Now by the time Jesus arrives at the scene, the Sabbath, which was meant to be a gift for man and a sign of God's kindness towards his people had been skewed and distorted by the

Pharisees, the religious elite in Israel. The Jews were so concerned about dishonoring the Sabbath that they added so many rules and regulations to the Sabbath in order that they would never, ever, ever break the Sabbath. There are 613 commandments in the Torah, the first five books of the Bible. But for the Jews, there was this oral tradition called the Mishnah that added an extra 1500 rules on top of that. And in their attempt to never ever cross the line, they created a million more lines. This being the very essence and definition of legalism. But anyways, Jesus shows up on the scene and he picks the Sabbath intentionally as the day in which he performs the majority of his public miracles. This drives the Pharisees

absolute bonkers. They hate that Jesus heals on the Sabbath. They think healing and casting out demons is work. Therefore, Jesus, when Jesus heals on the Sabbath is breaking the Sabbath. But Jesus responds and tells them in Mark two, that he is Lord of the Sabbath. In Mark three, Jesus heals a man with a shriveled hand when on the Sabbath. In John five, Jesus heals a lame man when on the Sabbath. In John nine, Jesus heals a blind man on the Sabbath. And in Luke 13, Jesus heals a crippled woman on the Sabbath. All of this causes an uproar. The Pharisees attack and accuse Jesus of breaking the Sabbath and doing what he does by the power of Satan himself. But Jesus responds to these Pharisees by articulating that they have missed the point of the Sabbath altogether. Sabbath was

not to be seen as a restraining and restricting straitjacket that sucked the life out of the weak, but rather a gift that was to be celebrated. Jesus is not breaking the Old Testament law. He is teaching them that the Sabbath was a grace to them, a gift to them, and that the Sabbath pointed towards him, right?

It's a covenant sign. Jesus says that the Sabbath is fulfilled in him. The death and resurrection of Jesus Christ was the fulfillment of that old covenant. And with Christ's resurrection, the curse that Adam had brought in is broken. And now God's people gather not on Saturday, the seventh day of the week, but on resurrection day, Sunday, the first day of the week. I'm jumping forward, but for the sake of time, the first day of the week. I'm jumping forward, but for the sake of time, I want you to understand this.

In Colossians 2, Paul is going to help us in our understanding of the Jewish Sabbath as New Testament believers. In Colossians 2, 16, Paul says, therefore, no one is to act as your judge in regard to food or drink or in respect to a festival or a new moon or a Sabbath day. Things which are a mere shadow of what is to come, but the substance belongs to Christ. The word for shadow that Paul uses here to describe the Sabbath is the same term or same

word that the author of Hebrews uses to describe the Old Testament sacrifices, meaning that the Sabbath law, like the sacrificial system and the feasts in the Old Testament, were all things that pointed towards Christ. And now that Christ has come, they are no longer in binding covenantal effect because that covenant has been fulfilled. I don't know of anyone who still thinks that we should slaughter animals for our sins. And Paul lumps the Sabbath into that same category. Therefore, we can conclude that the Sabbath with all of the accoutrements and all of its laws are no longer binding in the same way it was with the Jewish people. With that being said, I want to ask three questions.

Number one, how are we then to view the Sabbath as new covenant resurrection believing believers? Number two, how are we to establish the priority of rest that is modeled for us by our creator? And number three, what does the former have to do with the latter? Meaning what does Sunday and our commitment to rest have to do with each other? Well, let's answer the first question first. That being, how are we to view the Sabbath as New Testament believers? Well, there are really three options. Number one, Sunday is the Christian Sabbath exactly like it was for the Jews.

Jesus rose on the first day of the week. That is why Christians gather on Sunday, the first day of the week, because every single week is Easter Sunday. It's the same thing. It just transferred from Saturday to Sunday. Number two, another view would be that since Christ is the fulfillment of the Sabbath, as Paul says, and this is the only commandment out of the entire 10 commandments that is not mentioned in the New Testament, the Sabbath then is no longer in effect at all. We are still commanded to not steal, not murder, to not serve other gods. But this fourth commandment,

it's irrelevant and inconsequential. There are now only nine commandments that we adhere to. The third way of viewing the Sabbath is the view to which I hold. Sunday is not a direct transfer from the Jewish Sabbath, but some of the same principles are carried out. All of the ceremonial elements of the Sabbath are now done away with, but the observation of rest and worship continue. Although there is not a direct transfer, we see in the New Testament that the church gathered on the Lord's day,

which was the first day of the week. Paul tells the church in Corinth to lay aside money for their tithes when they gather on the first day of the week. Moreover, God has still set up a rhythm, and I want to talk about this with the remainder of our time, a rhythm into the fabric of creation where one day of the week we are to cease from our labors and spend the day resting and worshiping. Every Sunday is Father's Day, a weekly holiday to celebrate our God and what he has done. Furthermore, we model our Savior not only in our diligent work,

but when we also take time to step away from the throng and whirlwind of activity and dedicate undivided and undistracted time for rest and worship. Now, I want to return to the words of Jesus at this juncture. Jesus says in Mark 2, Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath. He reminds us that God's goal for the Sabbath

was to extend a gift to his creatures who were made to mimic their maker, who also rested. The Pharisees had taken this gift and made it so strict and severe that this day became impossible to enjoy. And Jesus turns the Sabbath on its head and says, you missed the point. Often Jesus's messages was dictated by his audience. His Lordship over the Sabbath remains the same. But I wonder, I wonder if he was addressing a Western church today, if he would

approach it the same way he did with the Jewish legalistic Pharisees. It's not that we today in the church have placed so many rules and regulations around the preservation of the Sabbath and the necessity of rest. It's that we have no rules at all. Sunday in our context is just another day. Maybe we go to church in the morning, but it's not the Lord's day. It's a day off with an event we attend in the morning. I think to those of us living in a climate such as this, Jesus would remind us that the Sabbath was made for man. We love to watch

films like Chariots of Fire where the gold Olympian, Eric Little, refused to run in the Olympics because he would not race on Sunday. We love that conviction. And yet there is little resemblance of that level of conviction in our culture at all. But regarding Sunday, there is no transfer of all the ceremonial elements of the Sabbath, but the observation of the Lord's day for the people of God shifts from the seventh day to the first day, the day Jesus rose from the grave. We see this in first Corinthians and Acts and in Revelation. Now, our second question, what do we do with this issue of rest? Well, let's look at rest first by looking at the life of Jesus and the incarnation. I talked about this in a couple, a couple episodes ago,

Jesus models a commitment to work. We talked about this in Mark one, he teaches in the synagogue, he rebukes an evil spirit. He cares for Peter's mom and then heals all of those who are sick and casts out many demons. But while others were flocking to hear him, to be healed by him, and to be near him, he would often withdraw from the region to pray. He did what his father had commissioned him to do in his work and in his rest and his humanity. Jesus modeled a godly work ethic and godly rest. He did not do everything. He did what the father had called him to do. Biblical rest opposes both ungodly extremes of work, that being workaholism on the one hand and laziness on the other hand, because biblical rest is not just a vegging out. It is proactively setting aside time to read, sing, pray, reflect, and enjoy God's

creation and enjoy our fellow man. We rest not only because constant busyness is like a spiritual cancer that sucks away at the health of our soul, but also because rest in the biblical sense is necessary for us to foster actual communion and intimacy with our heavenly father. Remember what the Edenic version of rest was. That means in the garden, it was a celebrating, enjoying, and communing with God. No relationship in your life thrives off of 15 minutes in the morning. Why would that be the case with your heavenly father? Extended time, deepening communion and dedicated space and margin are needed for you to build a friendship with your savior. It sounds funny to say the word friend when we refer to Jesus, but Jesus says, no longer do I call you slaves, but friends. And we sing what a friend

we have in Jesus, but time extended time at that is critical to cultivating that depth of relationship with our Lord. God is not a subject we must understand, but a person to know and rest and Sabbath affords us the rich privilege of tasting and experiencing his goodness at a deeper level. Furthermore, today there seems to be some sort of virtue in the grind of no days off, grind, grind, grind. But in my own heart, I'm learning as I come to the scriptures, there is no virtue in this endless grind, but rather a lack of biblical wisdom and biblical stewardship. Resting isn't for wimps. It's for the wise. Rest is not only an opportunity for us to enjoy God, but it's essential from our human level. God made us what they need to

recharge, to sleep, to eat, to be refreshed. Remember, we are not machines. We are men. We are not made from steel. We are made from the dust. Kevin DeYoung says, if the goal is God glorifying productivity over a lifetime of hard work, there are few things I need more than a regular rhythm of rest. But sadly, today we have no rhythm in our calendar. Many people work every day and maybe on the weekend, it is this messy mush of both work and rest. There is, as I've said, no rhythm. And in a world with no rhythm, we have no rest. So we are constantly running on empty and we endanger our souls in the process. Even beyond the scope of an isolated day of the week, Jesus also models the necessity of sleep. And as humanity, the writers of the gospel include the details that Jesus wasn't just always working. He was

also sleeping and at times napping. In the previous episode, I talked about how the sluggard loves to sleep, but that refers to someone who is idle and wants everything in his life to be easy. The proverb isn't saying the godly people sleep only four hours a night. In fact, the godly learn to bed early and rise early. It's not godlier to sleep less, to be more productive because God made us physical beings who need rest and who need sleep. Lack of sleep not only sucks away our physical strength, but also our spiritual health. You can see this in the account of Elijah. Elijah defeats the prophets at Mount Carmel and the wicked prophets of Baal. And then he becomes so fearful and depressed and anxious.

And the first thing God does with them is puts him to sleep and gives him a snack. You and I are not made of iron. We are made from the dust. We are fragile in one way or another, whether you like it or not, one third of your life will be spent sleeping. And if you want to get a lot done, there is few better things in your life that you could do than make a commitment to rest and sleep. Well, one writer says that the sleep deposits you make will pay dividends to your body, soul, and productivity over a lifetime. We reflect the image of God, not only when we work hard, but when we rest hard and rest itself is hard work. Like the Israelites who had to gather double the amount on the sixth day in order

that the seventh day would be a day of rest. Rest itself necessitates preparation and hustle beforehand so that we can take a deliberate break. Without this intentionality, we end up dragging our work into our planned time of rest. And instead, we find ourself in this middle mush where we are neither resting or working. And biblical rest is shutting down both production and distraction. We often live our lives in the realm of production where we are working or distraction where we are scrolling or binging, but seldom ever resting

where we are actually recharging and worshiping the one who made us. DeYoung once again draws our attention to this reality saying, one of the dangers of technology is that work and rest blend together in a confusing way. We never quite leave work when we are home. So the next day we have a hard time getting back to work when we are at work. We have no routine, no order to our days. We are never completely on and never totally off. So we watch YouTube for 20 minutes, study for 40 minutes, and then do our work in front of the TV. Now that is so true in my own life, and I think it's worth considering. The third question as we close is what do rest, the subject of rest, and Sabbath, our Sunday, have to do with each

other? To answer that, we must first remember that rest, biblically speaking, is not just a day off or a day where we just do all of our other work, like we do the bills or we do our homework or whatever else it might be. Biblical resting means that we are tuning our hearts to God's goodness, investing in the relationships in our life, and it means we eliminate distractions that mute the beauty of God's creation and God's fellow children in the world around us. For many believers,

for all time, this day of rest, this day of fellowship, and this day of worship and recharging has been the Lord's day, Sunday. But with the influx of children's sports and the elimination of the evening service for churches, people no longer see the Lord's day as the Lord's day, but maybe just the Lord's morning or even potentially just another day. But the Bible begs us to consider that if God instituted something into the fabric of creation,

that we, as his image bearers are to mirror and mimic him not only in his working, but in his resting. Is that not something we should still do? And if resting is enjoying and worshiping God with our fellow man, should we not do that on the day that the saints for the last 2,000 years have done? Therefore, the Lord's day, that being Sunday, is not just an event, but a celebration and a day of rest and recharging and worship. Furthermore, as we rest on the Sabbath, we are reminded that the rest of which the Old Testament promised was fulfilled

in Christ. Jesus says, come to me, all you who are weary and burdened and heavy laden, and I will give you what? Rest for your souls. In the gospel, Jesus gives us the rest we need the most. For those of us in Christ, Hebrews promises that although we have already received that rest because of Christ's work, one day, finally and completely, we will enter that rest and we will be with our Savior and with our God for all eternity. Stay dialed in.