Driving to Church, using electricity, using the telephone, posting on the internet, flushing the toilet, and a host of other things are forcing others to work on the Lord's Day.

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Brad
PCA Member
Virginia

Pro 16:33 The lot is cast into the lap; but the whole disposing thereof is of the LORD.

Isa 8:20 To the law and to the testimony: if they speak not according to this word, it is because there is no light in them.

Unless you want to start a Theocracy me using or not using electricity will not stop Allegheny Power from running their power station on Sunday.

I will only say this one more time. The utilities argument is just plain ignorant (especially when used to justify eating out on the Sabbath).

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Benjamin P. Glaser
Pittsburgh, PA,
Fairmount ARP Church
Candidate Under Care Pittsburgh Theological Seminary & Reformed Presbyterian Theological Seminary
"The benefit of deliverance becomes the more precious in the same proportion in which we are brought to apprehend the magnitude of the evil from which we have been rescued"
-- Zacharias Ursinus, Commentary on the Heidelberg Catechism

Staying on topic, the rules in the OP are not binding to anyone other than the OP. Nowhere in Brad's post did he state a desire to get him some Mickey D's: just that there is no way to avoid others working on the Lord's day as long as people behave normally in their homes or attend a church farther away than walking distance. And if the idea of following the 4th commandment includes not working, why then does your wife or mother have to work in the kitchen cooking on the Lord's Day? I would appreciate a valid reason for the exception applying to cooking meals which involves preparation and cleaning up on Sunday.

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Mostly because Jesus says we can eat and prepare our own food on the Sabbath.

Read the Ch. XXI of the WCF and look at the WSC and LC for the reasoning.

please let us flush the toilet

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Will
Christ Church (ARP)
Lincolnton, NC

Read these and your reasoning does not apply. Using Jesus' words, everyone is responsible for feeding themselves. That does not become the job of a servant, mom, wife, granny or auntie Mabel.

I think that this is a VERY good point brother, and one that I feel I would agree with readily.

It is also interesting to note the actions of Jesus here in Mark 2:23-27

"One Sabbath Jesus was going through the grainfields, and as his disciples walked along, they began to pick some heads of grain. The Pharisees said to him, "Look, why are they doing what is unlawful on the Sabbath? He answered, "Have you never read what David did when he and his companions were hungry and in need? In the days of Abiathar the high priest, he entered the house of God and ate the consecrated bread, which is lawful only for priests to eat. And he also gave some to his companions." Then he said to them, "The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath. So the Son of Man is Lord even of the Sabbath."

I think that that ties in very well with your point, if I understand it correctly. An exception arose out of need, and Jesus met that need without breaking the commandment. His heart cannot have been in the wrong place, as He is the Lord. Therefore in that particular case it must have been more a matter of the heart and attitude.

...I wonder if it would even be too much to say that that was the Biblical equivalent of "eating out while traveling"? Jesus clearly didn't "forget" to pack food, as He predestined that they would be without on that afternoon, therefore He must have purposefully intended to prove a point. That in a necessity, when our human minds do neglect a detail or two and unforeseen need does arise, that there is nothing sinful in taking measures to fulfill those needs, that we may be all the more ready to serve Him.

Also notice, and please correct me if I am making too big of an assumption here, that they were taking a walk through the countryside, and were not cooped up in constant meditation. Could we even possibly concur that the Pharisees who spotted them were not either...the more likely to have been doing such deep study as legalistic as they were? Otherwise, they would not have necessarily spotted Jesus way out in the fields.

Thank you for your humility in the presentation of your opinion. That is of great encouragement to me.

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Ben Comin
Communicant Member of Manchester RPC
Lower Burrel, PA

+ =

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As you consider this, keep in mind God never required man to "sabbath" (cease) from eating in the Fourth Commandment. The Lord was correcting the man-made rules of the Pharisees connected with food preparation. There were certain times in Israel's history where God provided their food (manna) the day before the Sabbath so that the distraction of food preparation would be minimized on that day.

The Fourth Commandment has always required some advance preparation. This aspect is summarized in the Westminster Larger Catechism:

Scripture "proofs" supra.

Going out to get gasoline for the car, cash from the ATM, running to the grocery store to get an item to complete a recipe ordinarily result from a lack of planning, (preparation) and ordinarily distract from Lord's Day worship as well as require others to work on the Lord's Day (to meet your lack of preparation).

I use the word "ordinarily" because there are emergency or unusual circumstances that would make an exception. However, the "exceptions" are not the rule.

The Commandment That Time Made 'Optional'

Here's one of those surprising things you learn when you study church history. You read the words of Charles Spurgeon talking about "profane Sabbath-breakers", and the Puritans talking about Sabbath-breaking in the same sentence as lying, lusting, and other moral failings. You read many of the greatest theologians and seminary professors essentially saying: "of course we believe in the Sabbath, it is one of the 10 commandments". Now fast forward a hundred years or two, and you find modern Christians, usually with a fraction as much bible knowledge, who are so sure of themselves that the Sabbath is no longer for today. So who's right, the new Christians, or the old ones?

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1689 Baptist Confession

Psa 55:16 As for me, I will call upon God; and the LORD shall save me.
Psa 55:17 Evening, and morning, and at noon, will I pray, and cry aloud: and he shall hear my voice.
James Farley, Wilderness Road Baptist Assembly.
Husband of Melissa and father of Ann.
www.wildernessroadbaptist.org

Hello again.

In what is likely to be my last post on this thread, I would just like to address a couple of points which I have seen come up several times:

1. The issue of "eating out" vs. preparing food at home.
2. Whether it is "pharisaical" to be specific in our statements about what is and is not proper to do on the Sabbath.

1. Eating Out

It would seem clear to me that a family preparing food for itself at home and eating out at restaurants on the Sabbath are as different as night and day. In the case of eating at home, a family is simply using a small amount of time to prepare and eat the food necessary for it during the day, which so long as it is not overly elaborate need not take away from the spiritual focus of the day. This has always been viewed (by the Puritans and down through church history) as a legitimate and necessary activity to take place on the Sabbath day.

Eating out, however, involves employing others, for a wage, to engage in servile work for extended periods on the Sabbath in violation of God's law and to the great detriment of their souls. The cooks and waitresses are not simply involved in preparing one small meal at each mealtime in which they themselves are partaking; they are serving table after table, family after family, for meals with which their only involvement is as a labourer; this is their daily work, and they are now labouring and working on the Sabbath the same way they work on other days. One family eating in a restaurant on the Sabbath might only spend one hour to do so, but you can be sure that the workers within are going to need to be there a lot longer than that to cater for yours and other people's dining. And so what is done for our pleasure and convenience is contributing to the death of other people's souls.

This point is actually a very good illustration of the spiritual heart of God's command. This is not just some arbitrary regulation with no real spiritual implications (which of course none of God's laws could possibly be). The Fourth Commandment speaks directly about not making others work on the Sabbath, and it is surely not difficult to understand why. When we employ others to work for us on the Sabbath, we are participating in causing them to disobey God's command and to lose out on the spiritual benefits of the Sabbath of which their souls are so needful. This is true whether or not that person happens to be a Christian . . . if he is not yet converted, then he is of course especially needful of the ability to turn to the things of the soul on God's special day, and it is especially sad to be party to keeping him from doing that. This is not just a hypothetical, this is a very real issue with very real spiritual implications for people . . . I have given out many church invitations to strangers who said they could not make it to a worship service on the Sabbath because of work, most of them working in restaurant or shops. And will Christians be a party to making a use of people like this on God's holy day, as though those people just existed for their convenience?

As J.C. Ryle said (a quote I saw in another recent thread): “Have servants, and shop-men, and engine-drivers, and coachmen, and clerks, and porters, no souls? Do they not need rest for their bodies and time for their souls, like other men?”

And so to refrain from making others work on the Sabbath unnecessarily is nothing less than a direct outworking of the second greatest command, that we should love our neighbours as ourselves.

If anyone regards being exact on these matters as being "pharisaical", I must say I believe that represents a great misunderstanding of what real "pharisaism" really was, about which more below:

2. "Pharisaism"

I have seen it stated more than once that to go beyond the most basic statements about the Sabbath, to actually address specifics about what ought and ought not to be done on the Sabbath, is equivalent to pharisaism. I must say that I disagree with this very strongly. The main error of the Pharisees with respect to the Sabbath is not that they were exact; it is that they had lost sight of the real purposes of the Sabbath, and thus multiplied their own rules without Scriptural foundation and without any true regard for the glory of God and the good of men's souls.

The Puritans and Scottish churches (with whose teachings I identify) could not be farther from such an error in their teachings on the Sabbath, as anyone remotely familiar with them will know. We must realise that their detailed instructions on Sabbath observance were rooted in a deep Scriptural understanding of God's purposes in instituting the Sabbath and in its true benefit for men's souls, and no matter what particular detail of Sabbath observance they were writing about, no matter how meticulous they might seem, if you trace their reasoning to its end you will find it always comes back to the greatest command of loving God with all our hearts and with all our minds and with all our souls, and the second greatest command of loving our neighbours as ourselves.

But the fact that love to God and man is the heart of Sabbath observance certainly does not mean that in practical terms people may "apply" the principles any way they like. The Puritans wrote very pointedly and in absolute terms on the impropriety of certain activities, because there is simply no way that such activities could be consistent with the Scriptural principles of the Sabbath. Sabbath observance is not an arbitrary or subjective issue any more than obeying the other nine Commandments is. And ministers are just as right to expound on the practical and detailed applications of honouring the Sabbath as they are to expound in depth and in practical ways on refraining from stealing, from lust and from bearing false witness.

It is a great tragedy to despise the great heritage of teachings we have from the Puritans on this issue without coming to understand the substance behind them.

Kind regards,

Jie-Huli

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Jie-Huli
Metropolitan Tabernacle Church
London, England

The problem with this reasoning, especially in this particular thread, is that almost none of the specific activites listed in the OP were possible 100+ years ago. There were no televisions, no internet or computers, no cars for leisurely drives, no ATMs. Who's to say Spurgeon wouldn't have approved of all those things? I think we all agree that we should honor the Lord's Day - that's not the point of the thread. We are discussing specific activities, and in that regard Spurgeon is irrelevant other than napping and recreational activities.

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Mason
Member, Redeemer Presbyterian Church (PCA)
New York, NY

"Come now, and let us reason together," says the Lord, "Though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they are red like crimson, they shall be as wool." - Isaiah 1:18

Forgive me, for I did not mean to give the impression that I felt that such an act was the acceptable norm. I am terribly sorry if I gave that impression, and am also convicted, Jie-Huli. Didn't mean to host a covenanter roasting...



Perhaps part of my conviction stems from the fact that as the body of Christ we need to be more active in searching our churches for those that need places to go or stay over the Sabbath. I know that that is a particular weakness of mine, but it would certainly help reduce the need for other people in some industries to break the Sabbath. (Yes I realize that I said "need" and I do not mean for that word to open a can of worms...)

Certainly an invitation to lunch, dinner, or offer of lodging for the night can extend to more than just the visiting pastor and his family...should the need arise and other guests be present.

But I'll shut up now, before I make myself sound even more ignorant. And maybe that isn't a problem in your churches, but I know certainly that that is an area that I myself can stand growth in.

We are indebted to the Puritans on many levels. But we should also remember the historical context of Puritanism, and realize they went overboard on some of their rules and regulations. To automatically assume they are correct on every principle is simplistic and naive. We should base our actions and behaviors on Scripture alone, though we can certainly learn from the insights of our spiritual forbears. My point is that just because we disagree with the Puritans on specific issues doesn't mean we "despise" them or fail to understand them. Any further discussion on this topic should be in a different thread, but as for the specifics listed in the OP, the Puritans' view is mostly irrelevant.

Hello, Ben. I certainly was not responding in particular to anything that you wrote. I was just responding generally to several statements I have seen in this and another thread. Please do not think that I was targeting you with my words. Happy to interact with you here.

You are right that hospitality towards others in the church is often very important in helping everyone to honour and benefit by the Sabbath. While young people who live alone can still prepare simple meals for themselves, it is often much nicer if they can be invited to a family's home for good spiritual fellowship during the meal. At some churches (such as my own), many people eat lunch right at the church, and there is always space for visitors to stay as well.

My experience is that, generally speaking, the churches which have the highest regard for sanctifying the Sabbath are also the most forward in offering practical hospitality (meals, transportation, etc.) to visitors.

Kind regards,

Jie-Huli