The number seven is a big deal in the Bible. Yeah, in biblical Hebrew the word seven is connected to the idea of fullness or completeness. And that is something we all long for but do not often experience. Instead we find ourselves working endlessly, fighting back chaos with no real rest. Yes! Now, keep that all in mind as we turn to Genesis 1 in the Bible. It begins with darkness and disorder. But then God speaks to bring about light and order so that life can flourish. And this happens over the course of six days. Each day is marked with the phrase, "There was evening and there was morning." But, on the seventh day something special happens. God stops and rests. Right. Creation is brought to its completion on the seventh day. And that phrase, "There was evening and there was morning," does not appear on day seven. It is like a day with no end. On the seventh day, God's presence fills his creation. The land provides for all of God's creatures, including humans, who are appointed to rule the world with God forever. Kings and queens of the seventh day rest. I can get into that. But the humans are deceived by a dark power and they forfeit that rest. They are exiled into the wilderness where they have to work as slaves to the land. Until they die and return to the dust from which they came. But God wants to restore humanity back to that seventh day rest. So, he chooses to give the family of Israel that experience of ultimate rest so they can share it with others. But, how? They are in Egypt, slaves to an oppressive empire who is grinding them into the dust. So, God confronts Egypt and liberates the Israelites, taking them through the darkness and chaos on the way to the Promised Land. While they are on their way, they find themselves in the wilderness. It is easy to get lost. Life is a struggle. They are not in the land of rest yet. While they are on their way, God invites them, in the wilderness, to start living as if they are in the promised land. But, how do you practice the future rest in the wilderness? God tells them that every seventh day, they are to stop their work. Or, in Hebrew, to "shabbat" so that they can rest and enjoy God's good world. So, take a whole day to live as if the ultimate rest has already come. Yeah. This is the sabbath, celebrated every week on the seventh day. But, there is more. The sabbath is just one of seven festivals that Israel practiced every year. Each one anticipating that seventh day rest. That is a lot of sevenths! And there is even more! Every seven years, the Israelites will liberate slaves, forgive debts and let the land rest for a whole year. And then, every seven times seven years was the ultimate seventh day rest, called the year of Jubilee. If anybody had lost their land or gone into debt, all was forgiven, everything restored. Oh! So the sabbath, these feasts, the year of Jubilee, are all pointing toward the hope of future rest. Right! Now, when the Israelites when into the land, they forgot their God. So, they forfeit their chance to rest in the promised land. They are exiled and enslaved again by an oppressive nation, led back into a world of chaos and disorder. But, Israel's prophets said that their exile will end one day and that the ultimate jubilee of freedom and rest would come. But generations go by and they are still waiting. It is at this dark point in the story that Jesus appears. And he launches his public mission on a sabbath day. Yeah, he read aloud from the scroll of Isaiah saying that it was time for all captives and slaves to be released because this was the year of the Lord's favor. What did he mean, "This is the year of the Lord's favor"? He was talking of the ultimate jubilee. So, Jesus is claiming that seventh day rest would come through him. Right, he said that he was the Lord of the Sabbath. And he confronted disorder and darkness in all of its forms, liberating people from sickness, sin, even from death itself. Yet, Jesus was killed, so even his work was undone. Well, it seemed that way. But notice, Jesus timed his death to take place at the end of the week. His body rested in a tomb during the sabbath and on the eight day he rosed from the dead. Oh, wait, the eight day? You mean, the first day of a new week? Exactly. Jesus' resurrection was like the first day of a new creation where God's light and life broke into the darkness. So, because of the resurrection we have hope in God's promise of future rest. But, we are not there yet. It is like we are still in the wilderness, where we experience struggle and pain. But, as we journey towards that ultimate seventh day, Jesus invites us to experience a taste of real rest now by following him. Or, in his words, "Come to me all of you who are weary and burdened and I will give you rest."
I braved the depiction of blue beard muscle king Jesus to bring you this comment.
Yeah, so I was expecting what I will call an "over-realized eschatology" (this may not be the proper use of the word -- open to correction) that sees the Sabbath rest as purely metaphysical rather than physical as well. Yes, Jesus is our Sabbath rest. Yes, the people of God have a "further rest." But to say there is a "further" is to say that there is one now. To practice Sabbath rest devoid of the eschatology of such is not comforting. A full keeping of the Sabbath is resting in anticipation of that further rest.
I haven't watched a ton of BP videos but enough to know that most of them are pedagogical rather than didactic, that is, they do well explaining the concepts but not attaching any moral of the story or imperative to them.
I like the video. I watched it this morning while eating my breakfast. It made me want to keep the Sabbath.
This is a good biblical introduction to how we get to the application and obedience of Sabbath. It's not new, people have taught this before. I think I learned this approach from Richard Pratt at RTS and heard it revisited by Mike Glodo who taught Gen-Joshua survey.
It's notable that when we (and I mean all us modern brothers and sisters here in /r/Reformed) look at the OT Sabbath practices, we become experts at justifying epochal adjustments. They were agrarian, they were in the Old Covenant, it was 4000 years ago, etc and YET even the most "High Sabbath" among us (who would cite Joel Beeke or Joseph A. Pipa, Jr. as their modern inspirations) would probably be stoned by Moses.
But when we look at the Puritans, well then that's a different story. We MUST imitate them and fight their battles against their cultural/vocational chaos and build their monuments to God's resting mercies or else we are "Low Sabbath" or "No Sabbath."
Woe be unto us if we look away from the marvelous example of the Puritans and their determined battle to enjoy the fruits of God's sabbath rest in their day. Their principles and discipline are to be commended and imitated to some degree suitable to our own situation and where they match up to our own summary of Scripture found in our confessions, which they wrote.
And there's the rub. The ones that wrote what I swore to uphold and teach also applied it, and included in the text some applications that they deemed obvious and eternal, but I requested from my Presbytery to be granted an exception in some of their applications. And I'm sure some of them looked sideways at me for it.
That's not because I'm "Low Sabbath" or "No Sabbath." It's because I'm fighting different Chaos-Foes and making different monuments to God's Sabbath Mercies than they did because my people (congregation/family) aren't Puritans. They live in different circumstances and require me to set before them other Scriptural principles and promises in order to guard their hearts from the chaotic world that would steal their Sabbath joy and foretaste of heaven.
This video gives a great starting place for discussing Sabbath. But our historic theologians do us no help when they simply point to the Puritans and grunt and the frown when we don't apply it like they did.
Is there a wilhelm scream at 3:18?
Dope animations.
Last I checked, we still live in a fallen world, where work is hard and we still struggle with sin. So there yet remains a sabbath rest for us, while we wait for the "not yet" part of redemption. We attain some measure of spiritual rest, but even that is not yet complete in this life. I think if the video had concluded with a little bit more about Jesus' New Creation work being complete on the Lord's Day, and that we are given a wonderful opportunity to rest on that day in anticipation of his return then that would have been good.
Just watched, and loved but I'm marking this as depiction of Jesus. They always have such wonderful vague animations, I wish they would do a better job of not including any depiction of God so that everyone could watch it.