God Was Pleased

There are some statements in the Bible that are not just difficult to understand but also hard to believe. That is to say that they are hard to believe if your beliefs about who God is don’t square with the Person the Bible reveals as God. One of those statements struck me this morning as my devotional reading led me to consider the meaning and purpose of the Sabbath. Stick with me and I will try to retrace my thoughts.

Once when the Pharisees challenged Jesus for plucking grain on the Sabbath, an act that was forbidden by their law, Jesus made a somewhat enigmatic claim: ““The Sabbath was established for [man], and not [man] for the Sabbath. So then, the Son of Man is lord even of the Sabbath.” (Mark 2:27-28) The messianic title, Son of Man, usually draws attention to some aspect of the humanity of Jesus. In this case, Jesus as Lord claims lordship over a human benefit ordained by God in creation: sabbath. Just as God “rested” upon completion of His work in creation, His people were told to take a break from their required labors. Work is not a result of the curse; caring for the Garden was explicitly assigned to God’s people before they rebelled. That work became more tiresome after the fall, but the work and the rest from work are part of God’s original design.

I notice that God was pleased with His original plan; the Genesis record of creation emphasizes that God said it was good. Work and the rest it necessitated were part of the good creation. The fall into sin affected every relationship encountered by God’s people, including their relationship to work and rest. When God set about to rectify the damage done by the fall, He devised a plan to send His Son to earth to work on His behalf. Being the perfect man, the Son was assigned the perfecting work. The most unpleasant part of that work took place on the hill called Calvary.

Here is the shocking revelation about God: He was pleased to offer His only Son at Calvary. We must not imagine a sort of sadistic pleasure; rather, God was pleased to know that through the suffering of His Son, all relationships would be made right again. Isaiah puts it this way: “Yet Yahweh was pleased to crush him…. From the trouble of his life he will see; he will be satisfied. In his knowledge, the righteous one, my servant, shall declare many righteous, and he is the one who will bear their iniquities. (Isaiah 53:10–11). The mess made in the Garden by the first Adam would be corrected by the second Adam.

This sometimes puts believers living in between the first and second coming of the Son of Man in an awkward place. Because we need food, clothing and shelter, we must work to provide those necessities. Human society has become very complex, so most of us don’t tend our own garden to provide our physical needs. In theory, each of us labors as a tiny cog in a giant machine that results in our physical needs being met. It is this labor that necessitates a sabbath rest. One day in seven we take a break to recharge our batteries, and I don’t believe it matters what day of the week we rest, just so we rest. The Fourth Commandment reminds us that our rest day has a purpose: in it we remember our Creator.

But that is not all. We are also required to continue the work Jesus started by bringing the good news of God’s redemptive plan to all people. Paradoxically, our sabbath rest serves as part of our work to bring the good news. Our paychecks would be 14% larger if we skipped the seventh-day break. Those who get overtime pay would benefit even more. But the commandment requires us to honor God with rest one day in seven. If we make this obvious to non-believers, we are declaring God’s rule over our lives; we declare God’s Kingdom come in our lives. (For more reasons to go to church see “Why Bother With Church?)

Everybody knows John 3:16, even many non-believers. What struck me in all this today is how fully “God so loved the world.” As the famous verse says, He sent His Son. But there is more. The world God created is not only the Perfect Planet  for human existence, it abounds with pleasures and beauty. God didn’t have to make pretty flowers or gorgeous sunsets or majestic mountains or tasty food or marital love, but He did. Paul says God “provides us all things richly for enjoyment.” That includes work and rest. It pleased Him to use Calvary to do that. Remember that the next time you take your sabbath rest.

Related posts: “What is the Church?”