Scoff if You Must, but There Remains a Sabbath!

“How long, O simple ones, will you love being simple? How long will scoffers delight in their scoffing and fools hate knowledge?"
Proverbs 1:22

I dusted off my 8 Track player this morning to play The Bee Gees before going to work. Finally at the office, I got out of my champagne green Chevette. I immediately realized I left my 17 pound cell phone back at home. Oh well, no time to worry about that now. I needed to fax over a contract before 9:30 am, or miss the deadline. I fired up my Apple IIc and watched the glow of the CRT-based green monochrome 12-inch monitor. It was taking forever to boot up! Why so slow? I have this computer juiced with 1.125 MB of RAM. So, what is taking it so long! Oh well. The fax is away so now I can use the land line again. I dialed my administrative assistant on the rotary dial phone. Busy signal.

This is what it's like to be out of touch. This is the life of a man disconnected from reality. A person who lives like this, stuck somewhere between the 70's and 80's, must know nothing of the demands of modern life (or post-modern life, or post-post-modern - whatever!) I must be so out of touch. Why else would college students and young adults laugh at me when I suggest they take a Sabbath from their work?

It took us some time to interpret the cacophony of laughter last Sunday night. Were the guffaws simply verification of truth? Was it a kind of "oh, how true" laughter? Was it a nervous, semi-confessional form of laughter? Well, maybe some of it. But after sifting through some post-Sunday conversations, it seems it was not. It seems like it was scoffing. It was the deep, guttural belly laughter of the scoffer. This laughter said, "Ha, Ha. This guy can't be serious."

But we can be serious because of the testimony of scripture. There remains a Sabbath. Hebrews 4:8-11, "For if Joshua had given them rest, God would not have spoken of another day later on. So then, there remains a Sabbath rest for the people of God, for whoever has entered God's rest has also rested from his works as God did from his. Let us therefore strive to enter that rest, so that no one may fall by the same sort of disobedience." Listen closely to what the author of Hebrews is saying. A physical liberator (Joshua) couldn't give rest. Even though the Israelites were God's people in God's place with God's laws, they were not at rest. They still needed a spiritual liberator (Jesus) to give them spiritual rest.

We now have the benefit of Jesus' finished work on the Cross. We can rest from our work because Jesus finished the most important work ever attempted - the work of salvation. We can, like God in Genesis 1, look back on our week's best effort and say "it is good." Again, not good because of our accomplishments but good because of His accomplishment. A Sabbath has a new and deeper meaning in Jesus. Redeemed lives are called good again through Him.

This is why we Sabbath. We choose to remember and rest in Jesus and his finished work. We revel in the joy of this deep soul rest given to us by an act of mercy. True, final rest has come. Now that the true rest has come, do we cease to take it? How ironic. The Israelites struggled to Sabbath when it was only a foreshadowing of final rest. They followed when under the guardianship of Law. And now, when the free gift of soul rest has come - now we reject it? Sadly, I believe it's only those out of touch with God who would do that.