This episode explores the depths of stress that silently eats away at society and provides insights into how taking a day of rest, as originally given in the Sabbath, can benefit one’s overall well-being. With references from biblical texts and historical shifts to Christian practices in observing Sunday as the day of rest, the conversation unearths profound lessons in resting appropriately and realigning our spiritual selves. Join Ronald Dart in this journey of understanding the policies of rest and how they can be applied practically to our modern lives.
The CEM Network is pleased to present Ronald L. Dart and Born to Win.
SPEAKER 01 :
You aren’t under any stress, are you? Well, the funny thing about that question is that most people, when they’re asked the question, would say, well, no, not really. when the truth is they may be, even as they speak, suffering from various kinds of stress-related illnesses and diseases. But at the moment, they don’t feel stressed. They say, well, no, not really. Now, the reason I know that’s true is because I had two different doctors ask me the same question within a matter of a month, and each of them said, well, are you having any kind of stress in your life? And I said, no, not really. And then afterward, especially when I started looking at some of the stuff for this broadcast, I had to say, oh, yes, you are. Low, persistent levels of stress are generally not recognized, but they’re there, and they slowly eat away at a person’s health, at our mental health and our physical health. Everybody suffers from stress. Some people know it, and some people don’t. Truth is that whenever they did a little survey about workers who were reporting a stress-related condition among teachers and public schools and what have you, other schools, 58% of them had an observable condition related to stress. Hospital employees, 43%. Clerical workers, you’re just a good old office grunt, right? Banging on a typewriter, doing ordinary work. 35% of them are suffering from an overt form of In other words, it’s already affected their body in some significant way. Federal employees, well, only 27% of them, I guess they have it easy. Often, these people have got psychiatric problems, chemical dependency problems, and this doesn’t include a lot of us sort of folks who are on the way to that kind of problem. What sort of things does stress actually cause? I ask you, I say, well, are you suffering from any kind of stress? And you say, no, not really. Well, let’s consider the number of things in a person’s life that might crop up. High blood pressure, panic attacks, anxiety attacks, midlife crisis, burnout, asthma. Insomnia. Ah, yeah. Ever lie awake at night worrying about things, full of anxiety over something, and then the morning, the broad daylight doesn’t seem as bad as it might have seemed? Mood swings. Depression. Chronic fatigue, encephalitis, oh yeah, addictions, allergies, skin rashes, memory and concentration difficulties, ulcerative colitis, Crohn’s disease, bowel problems, ulcers. My goodness, you get the idea from something like this that the whole world is suffering from stress? Well, they tell us that stress now contributes to 90% of all diseases. How in the world did we ever get into a mess like this? Why are we being eaten up with stress-related disease and stress-related illnesses? Well, the answer could be because we think we have to work harder than God. God, you know, worked six days and took a day off. Not only that, he commanded man to do the same thing. God actually gave us a tool to deal with stress. And for the most part, we ignore it. What is it? Well, it’s called the Sabbath. Well, when did he give us this tool? Well, you might, if it’s handy, go get your Bible. Turn to the second chapter of Genesis. If you’re driving a car, well, just pay attention to the traffic and listen to what I have to say. In Genesis 2 and verse 1, Thus the heavens and the earth were finished and all the host of them. God finished everything that he set out to do in terms of creation. And on the seventh day God ended his work which he had made, and he rested on the seventh day from all his work that he had made. Now, I don’t think God was tired. Nevertheless, when he got through with the work, he stopped working and he rested. And he went further. He says, God blessed the seventh day and sanctified it because that in it he had rested from all his work which God created and made. Another passage of Scripture tells us that God not only rested, He was refreshed. Now, that’s a little foreign to the way most of us think about God. God is all-powerful. God can do anything. God can work 24 hours a day. God never sleeps. And yet here is the Scripture telling us that God, when He finished His work, rested and was refreshed. Now, the human mind, which, after all, was modeled after God’s mind, can work continually at a task only so long. Then it needs to rest and be refreshed because it’s in the rest process that our mind sorts out all the stuff that we have done and all the things we have learned and all the experiences we’ve had and attaches meaning to them and relates them to one another. And if you never rest, your mind never gets a chance to sort out the enormous amount of information that you stick into it every day. This is more obvious in a way with the body that you have to rest, but it’s just as true of the mind. So, when God had finished creating man on the sixth day, he took a look at Adam and said, let’s take tomorrow off. Take a day off, which they promptly did. Now, what do you suppose the Bible means when it says that God sanctified the seventh day? That’s one of those Bible words, sanctify, like holy and sacred and so forth. What does that mean? Well, let me give you a quick lesson in theological words. Sanctify is one of a set of words which all deal with the same general idea. It means to set apart. Generally in the Bible, it means to set apart for God. Holy, sacred, saint, sanctify, all come from the same root in both the Old Testament and New Testament. They mean either in verb or noun form to set apart or that which is set apart. Now imagine, if you will, what you always say, seven baseballs. There’s something that can be done that’s just, to all practical purposes, they’re all identical. They’re all brand new from the box, and you set them out in a row in front of you. Then you take one of those baseballs and set it apart from the others. You have made that ball holy in the simplest and secular meaning of the word. It’s not different from the other baseballs in any way except that you have set it apart. Now if you add the idea of setting that baseball apart as belonging to God… Well, then you have a fairly complete idea of what the Bible means when it says that God sanctified the seventh day. For there was nothing different from one day from another. They’re all the same. The sun goes down, the sun comes up. Days are days, right? So the only thing that made this day different was that God set it apart. Now, how did he do that? Well, it wasn’t merely saying that it was set apart, although that’s important enough. He actually set the day apart by working six days and then not working on the seventh. You follow me? If he had worked on the seventh, well, all seven days would have been identical. The way he set it apart was by not doing on that day what he did on all the other seven days. So… God set it apart simply by not working. When did he do it? Well, he did it from creation. And because it was a cessation, a pause, a rest day, and in Hebrew the word for that is Shabbat, so it is called the Sabbath. So where did the Sabbath day go from there? Well I’ll tell you about that when I come back after these words.
SPEAKER 02 :
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SPEAKER 01 :
So in the subsequent years, I mean from creation, the Sabbath existed. But generally speaking, it was forgotten. Finally, when Moses goes down and brings Israel out of Egypt… The Sabbath is brought into the Mosaic Covenant and is expressed as one of the Ten Commandments. It’s found in Exodus 20 and verse 8. Remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy. Six days shall you labor and do all your work. But the seventh day is the Sabbath of the Lord your God. In it you shall not do any work. You, nor your son, nor your daughter, nor your manservant, your maidservant, your cattle, nor your stranger that is within your gates. For in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea and everything that in them is, and rested the seventh day. Wherefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and hallowed it. To hallow is to sanctify. To sanctify is to set apart for God. That’s easy, isn’t it? We’ve already seen that. He worked six days, he rested the seventh, and by resting the seventh, he set the day apart or hallowed it. So, he says, the seventh day is the Sabbath of the Lord your God. And he might as well have said, because it’s what the Hebrew means, the seventh day is the rest of the Lord your God. Now, the commandment was to remember the Sabbath. And it was that way because the Sabbath had basically been forgotten. For a generation, Israel had been slaves in Egypt. They had worked as slaves seven days a week. Now, they were liberated. Not only were they liberated from slavery, they were liberated from working seven days a week. They could work six days, and now they were permitted to rest. Well permitted, they were permitted and commanded to rest. You know, there was a time when we in this nation kept a kind of Sabbath. Stores were closed. Men didn’t work their farms. Strenuous types of recreation were avoided. And what’s also interesting is that the churches all called it the Sabbath. I can remember vividly as a boy hearing deacons in church on Sunday morning in the opening or closing prayer saying, Lord God, bless us on this, your Sabbath day, this holy Sabbath day, this beautiful Sabbath day. They commonly called it the Sabbath day. I once asked some friends about this who were rather older than I was, and they said, oh, yes, I remember that people were that way, that even on the farm, their dad, who really did not mind so much working on Sunday, always made it a point to plow the field that was out of sight of the road because he didn’t want his neighbors who were on their way to church on Sunday to think that he actually would work on that day. I have a little book in my library called Baptist Distinctives. It’s dated 1946. In the back of the book, it has two confessions of faith. It has the Baptist faith and message, which is dated from 1925, and it has the much earlier New Hampshire confession of faith. And I thought the contrast between these two was interesting because of what it says about why Baptists observed Sunday as the Sabbath day. The New Hampshire Confession of Faith, which is very old, said, We believe that the first day of the week is the Lord’s Day or Christian Sabbath, and is to be kept sacred to religious purposes by abstaining from all secular labor and sinful recreations, by the devout observance of all the means of grace, both private and public, and by preparation for that rest that remaineth for the people of God. You know, it’s interesting how language changes over the years and generations. I’m sure that this, when it was written, made perfect sense. But when you read it now in the 20th century, it says that on the Sabbath day, we are to abstain from all secular labor and sinful recreations. And presumably, it’s all right for us to engage in sinful recreations on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, and so forth. I mean, that’s one way to look at it. But I think what they meant was that there are certain types of recreations that would be sinful if done on the Sabbath day. In 1925, this confession was modified by the Southern Baptist Convention under the title, The Baptist Faith and Message, and under the heading, The Lord’s Day. Now, mind you, the New Hampshire Confession of Faith had the heading, Of the Christian Sabbath. The Baptist Faith and Message of 1925, under the heading The Lord’s Day, says this, The first day of the week is the Lord’s Day. It is a Christian institution for regular observance. It commemorates the resurrection of Christ from the dead and should be employed in their exercise of worship and spiritual devotion, both public and private, and by refraining from worldly amusements and resting from secular employments, works of necessity and mercy only, excepted. Now, this is pre-war, and it still has a strong statement in it about abstaining from secular employments. But what is interesting is that it has been moved from close to the front to right near the end of this statement. The emphasis is no longer really on the Sabbath day as cessation and arrest. Its emphasis is now on the Lord’s day, which seems to be a different matter. The change is subtle, but the change is important. And later generations would diminish the idea of rest still further until the Lord’s Day obligation. Today, if you were to consider what most people think is really a matter of church attendance and worship, the Sabbath, instead of being a holy day, has become a holy hour. Now, I don’t know what these confessions of faith say today, but I can see what people do. They go to church, and then they head off to work, either at a job or in their yards, or maybe they go off to the golf course or the lake for water skiing or fishing, and there is no Sabbath day anymore. And it is killing us. I think the place we went astray was when we abandoned the fourth commandment. The fourth commandment is very precise. We are not to work on the seventh day. Israel was not given the option of keeping one day in seven. They had to keep the seventh day. In other words, there was no option for you to say, well, I’ll tell you what, I’ll keep Wednesday this week. And then next week, Wednesday, you really have something you need to do, so you decide, no, I’ll keep Thursday. And the following week, Thursday is busy, so you move it back to Tuesday. This is not the option that was given to Israel. They were taught, in fact, disciplined to observe that one day in seven, the seventh day. Now, toward the end of the first century, partly to distance themselves from the Jews because the Jews were coming under a great deal of persecution from the Romans about that time. And Christians were getting persecuted by people who thought they were Jews because a lot of them were keeping the Sabbath day. And so in order to distance themselves from the Jews, the largest body of Christian churches began to leave off Sabbath observance. and to observe Sunday as a day of worship instead of being a Sabbath day instead. Now, this is all documented in history. If you’d like to study the history of that change, well, drop me a line or give me a call. And I’ll tell you where you can get a book that will go through the entire history of the change. And I think will really open your eyes to one of the most significant events in the history of the Christian church. Just drop me a line at Post Office Box 560, White House, Texas, 75791. Or give us a call toll free at 1-888-BIBLE44. We’ll give you the address and phone number again later. And if you get in touch, we’ll let you know where to get a hold of a book that will explain all about the change in worship in the early church from Sabbath to Sunday. Now, the question is, did those Christians who made that change have the right to make it, or were they wrong? The more practical problem is that without divine sanction to set a day apart, well, the day has no authority and no reason why, having been changed once, it can’t be changed again or even do away with it altogether, which is essentially what most people have done. And we are paying a terrible price for this in our health, our peace of mind, and in our relationship with God. But isn’t this an Old Testament thing? Did Jesus keep Sabbath day? What did Jesus have to say on the subject? And as Christians and followers of Christ, how should we relate to this? Well, I’ll talk about that when I come back after these words.
SPEAKER 02 :
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SPEAKER 01 :
The Pharisees of Jesus’ day had really kind of lost touch, I think, with what the Sabbath was all about. They kept the Sabbath, but they had developed a set of rules and do’s and don’ts about the Sabbath that, to really understand it, would almost be the equivalent of a university degree. It was a They built what they call a fence around the law. That is, just to give you an illustration, the Sabbath is supposed to run from sundown to sundown. Well, they started the Sabbath a half hour before sundown, and they ended it a half hour after sundown because they just didn’t want to take any chances on getting too close to the line. Well, they had a lot more rules than that, and Jesus and his disciples came afoul of one of those rules on one Sabbath day. The story is in Mark 2 and verse 23. It came to pass as he went through the cornfields on the Sabbath day, and his disciples began, as they went, to pluck the ears of corn. And the Pharisees said to him, Look, why are they doing on the Sabbath day that which is not lawful? Well, not lawful according to who? We already read the commandment. There’s nothing in the commandment that says you can’t, if you’re wandering through a field on the Sabbath day, grab hold of an ear of corn and eat it as you go, is there? I didn’t read anything there like that. Well, the Pharisees said, well, if you can pluck one ear of corn, then can you do two? And if two, then three. And if three, then four. And if four, why not a bushel? And if a bushel, why not just go ahead and reap the whole crop? Well, you know, there’s a certain logic in all that, but that still wasn’t God’s law. It wasn’t what God said. It was what they said. Well, Jesus said to them, have you never read what David did when he had need? And when he was hungry, he and them that were with him? how he went into the house of God in the days of Abiathar the high priest, and did eat the showbread, which is not lawful to eat, but for the priests, and gave it to them that were with him. Now what Jesus here tells the Pharisees, and it’s rather shocking, is that, oh yeah, I understand the law, but sometimes because of human need there can be made an exception to the law. The Pharisees didn’t see it that way. They saw the law as controlling. The law was dominant. The law was over man. The law was a ruler. It was a set of rules, and the rules had to be obeyed, and even a fraction of the rules had to be punished severely in many cases. Jesus saw the law differently. Jesus saw the law as a guide to life, as a revealer of the difference between right and wrong, of showing a man what the right path is. Of course, to violate the law is a sin. But there are times when sound judgment and common sense will interpret the law differently from what another person might. Jesus’ interpretation of the law was, there’s not a thing in the world wrong with plucking a handful of grain on the Sabbath day as you walk through the field to eat it. He might very well, in fact, I’m certain he would have, eschewed the idea of engaging in a harvest on the Sabbath day. But having given them his illustration, Jesus came back and made a profound statement. He said to them, and this is Mark 2, verse 27, the Sabbath was made for man and not man for the Sabbath. Now that’s an awfully full statement. It says in the first place the Sabbath was made, and we’ve already seen how it was made. God made it by working six days, resting the seventh, and thereby setting it apart. He then pronounced his blessing upon that day. Not just any day, but the seventh day after six days of work. So that Sabbath was made. The Sabbath was made for man. not just for the Jews, not just for some men. It was made for man. Why, though, was it made? Well, it was made because man needed a rest. His poor old flesh and blood body needed a rest. His mind needed a rest. He needed some time for quiet, for reflection, and for drawing near to God. The Sabbath was made for man, not man made to keep the Sabbath, which seems to be the way the Pharisees interpreted the Sabbath day. And then he said another thing, very surprising. He said, therefore, the Son of Man is Lord also of the Sabbath. So Jesus establishes himself as the Lord of the Sabbath. Now the expression, the Lord’s Day, which is in common vogue among Christian people, I think must be derived from Revelation 1, I believe verse 10, where John says, I was in the Spirit on the Lord’s Day. And it’s a curious thing. that in reading the Bible, there is absolutely not one word anywhere in there to tie the expression the Lord’s Day to Sunday. And I would assume, based upon Mark 2 and verse 28, that if I were going to look around for the Lord’s Day, I would think that it is the Sabbath day. Let me make a suggestion. Why don’t you take the Sabbath off next week? The Sabbath begins at sundown Friday night and goes until sundown Saturday night. That’s the seventh day. You’ve been meaning to do some reading in the Bible, and you’ve been meaning to do some Bible-related subjects. That would be a good time to do it. You’ve been meaning to go by the municipal rose gardens and see the different varieties that are there and maybe consider what you should add to your own garden. Go on down there. Take the day off. Take plenty of time. Stop. Smell the roses. You know, scuff your feet through the mulch at the bottom of them. Look the place over. You’ve wanted to take the kids to the zoo. Go ahead, take the day off. Show the kids God’s handiwork in the animals and wonder why in the world he made the zebras with those funny stripes. You’ve been meaning to talk with God about what’s wrong with your life and why things aren’t working anymore. But you just haven’t found the time. But you see, that’s what the Sabbath is for. The Sabbath is a gift of time. It’s a day when you can take time to talk with God, a time to talk to your wife, time to talk to your children, time to draw the family closer together. Okay, so you go to church on the first day of the week, Sunday. Does that keep you from resting on the seventh day of the week? It might surprise you to learn that there were some early Christian churches that rested on Saturday and worshipped on Sunday. Others rested and worshipped on the Sabbath day. The truth is, though, that unless there is an authority outside of yourself that tells you to take the day off and dedicate it to God, you are just not very likely to do it. You’ll play games. You’ll take it off this week, and next week you’ll have something you have to do. And then the next week after that, you’ll have something to do. And pretty soon, your life and your body And your spirit and your health will be coming apart, and you won’t know why. The truth is, there is an authority outside of yourself that tells you to take the day off. It’s contained in the basic code that God gave for his worship. It’s the code that develops the two great laws. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and all your mind and all your strength, and you shall love your neighbor as yourself. That code is the Ten Commandments. And the fourth commandment is, remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy. Six days shall you labor and do all your work, but the seventh day is the Sabbath of the Lord your God. In it you shall not do any work. Why? Because in six days the Lord made the heaven and the earth, the sea and all that in them is, and rested the seventh day. Wherefore the Lord God blessed the Sabbath day and hallowed it. I have a suggestion. Next Saturday, why don’t we take the day off? Why don’t we spend a little time reading the Bible and spend a little time with our family? Until next time, this is Ronald Dart reminding you,
SPEAKER 02 :
You look like you need a rest. The Born to Win radio program with Ronald L. Dart is sponsored by Christian Educational Ministries and made possible by donations from listeners like you. If you can help, please send your donation to Born to Win, Post Office Box 560, White House, Texas 75791. You may call us at 1-877-7000. 888-BIBLE44 and visit us online
