Am I Overworking?
00:00:00.000 | Welcome back to a new week on the Ask Pastor John podcast.
00:00:08.400 | And today's question comes from me.
00:00:11.120 | Yes, from me.
00:00:12.720 | Pastor John, this is a question I wrestle with.
00:00:14.880 | Of course, the biblical pattern for our week is set in creation.
00:00:19.520 | Work six days, rest one day.
00:00:21.940 | But here in the United States, we live on a five-day workweek with two days of non-work,
00:00:27.160 | which is, I think, a rhythm that apparently was invented by Henry Ford to encourage workers
00:00:32.520 | to work only 40 hours a week so that they could consume more.
00:00:36.960 | So here's the question that I have.
00:00:38.460 | Should Christians work on Saturday, too?
00:00:41.940 | How should we reconcile the creation pattern of working six days with our American practice
00:00:47.120 | of working five days?
00:00:49.440 | Well, let me take this as an occasion to step back and say something about my understanding
00:00:54.840 | of the Sabbath, because that's part of what's going on here in that question.
00:01:01.320 | And then I'll tell you what I think about six days of work.
00:01:05.640 | Sounds good.
00:01:08.640 | I'm not a strict Sabbatarian, which for me means two things.
00:01:13.480 | I think the New Testament shifts the Lord's Day from Saturday to Sunday because of the
00:01:18.920 | resurrection calls it the Lord's Day in Revelation 110 and says that they were meeting on the
00:01:23.840 | first day of the week in Acts 27 and so on.
00:01:27.240 | Number two, I don't take the Old Testament command to keep the Sabbath as binding on
00:01:32.160 | the church today with the same strictness that it had in the Old Testament for several
00:01:37.680 | reasons.
00:01:38.680 | One is the way Jesus dealt with the accusations he received of his disciples breaking the
00:01:44.760 | Sabbath, like in Matthew 12, where they're plucking grain.
00:01:49.060 | And instead of saying, "No, they're not really breaking the law," instead of saying that,
00:01:54.460 | he goes back to David's eating the showbread, which he says was not lawful, and the priests
00:02:00.100 | in the temple.
00:02:02.440 | And then he says, "I tell you something greater than the temple is here.
00:02:05.840 | If you'd known what it meant when it said, 'I desire mercy and not sacrifice,' you wouldn't
00:02:10.460 | have condemned the guiltiness.
00:02:11.780 | The Son of Man is Lord of the Sabbath."
00:02:13.640 | That seems to me Jesus' way of loosening the strictness of Sabbath-keeping, as long as
00:02:19.000 | people are replacing it with allegiance to him and his way, and he becomes their Sabbath.
00:02:26.320 | And the other reason that I say he's loosening things up is because of the way Paul deals
00:02:30.600 | with it in Romans 14, where he says, "One person esteems one day better than another,
00:02:35.000 | and another esteems all day alike.
00:02:36.640 | Let everyone be fully convinced in his own mind."
00:02:39.000 | And Galatians 4, where he says, "You observe days and months and seasons and years, I'm
00:02:44.200 | afraid I've labored over you in vain."
00:02:46.760 | And Colossians 2:16, "Therefore let no one pass judgment on you with regard to a new
00:02:52.200 | moon, festival, or Sabbath," and so on.
00:02:55.720 | These are shadows.
00:02:56.720 | So it looks to me, my take on this very controversial issue is that the Sabbath restrictions in
00:03:05.480 | the Old Testament are loosened, but I do think I'm impressed with the fact that the early
00:03:11.760 | church didn't do it away with it entirely, because they met on the first day of the week,
00:03:15.440 | they called it the Lord's Day.
00:03:16.920 | It is rooted in six days of creation, as you pointed out.
00:03:20.560 | It's not rooted merely in ritualistic practices in Israel, it's rooted in the way God made
00:03:25.820 | the world and how he rested on the seventh day.
00:03:28.360 | So my view is, with a lot of flexibility, we should keep the Lord's Day for rest and
00:03:36.560 | for worship, for spiritual renewal and physical renewal.
00:03:41.720 | What it implies, I think, and here I'm not going to make a law, just like I don't want
00:03:46.560 | to make a strict law out of Sabbath-keeping.
00:03:51.760 | I'm impressed with the way the Old Testament set up work six, rest one, and specifically
00:04:01.400 | Exodus 20, verse 8, "Six days shall you labor."
00:04:06.040 | We usually think of Sunday being the command, "Don't work," but really the command is, "Do
00:04:12.640 | work," six.
00:04:14.400 | Exodus 34, "Six days shall you work," and on the seventh rest.
00:04:18.680 | Deuteronomy 5, 13, "Six days shall you labor and do all your work."
00:04:22.640 | So all my ministry, I've assumed I work six days.
00:04:27.000 | That's what I just assume.
00:04:28.000 | I work six days, I rest one.
00:04:30.480 | So I would take a day off, Monday or Thursday, as a pastor, and try to really take it off
00:04:36.240 | in a very restful way, since Sunday was a very stressed out and hard day.
00:04:41.120 | Now having said that, that I'm a six-day kind of guy, here are seven qualifications that
00:04:49.640 | make that difficult to apply.
00:04:52.480 | One, house, car, computers, garden all require work, not just vocation.
00:04:59.760 | So to say that you go to work five days a week might mean your Saturday is fixing the
00:05:04.160 | car or fixing the door or the faucet or cutting the grass, I mean, just to make life work.
00:05:10.760 | You've got to do lots of work besides what you do in your vocation.
00:05:14.640 | Number two, secular vocation may be one form of life ministry, and neighborhood and school
00:05:20.640 | or civic or church ministry might be another.
00:05:23.620 | So a person might only work four or five days on his so-called vocation and then have another
00:05:29.300 | day of work in his ministry, in his civic life.
00:05:33.400 | Third, the ambiguity of what a workday is figures in here.
00:05:38.600 | Like if you work 10 or 12 hour days, it raises the question whether you have already worked
00:05:44.040 | six days in five days.
00:05:46.680 | Number four, for some of us, it's not easy to distinguish work and leisure.
00:05:51.360 | If I'm sitting on the couch reading a biography, am I working?
00:05:54.920 | Well, it might depend whether I'm taking notes or what does it really depend on?
00:05:59.000 | I mean, I love my work and so it's hard for me to distinguish and that has to be taken
00:06:03.640 | into account.
00:06:04.640 | Fifth, there is real possibility that a person may work six days because he is in bondage
00:06:11.600 | to work.
00:06:12.880 | He's into ego, he's into finance, he's into escaping home, and that would make working
00:06:18.640 | six days sin.
00:06:20.960 | Or it may be that a person wants to work as little as possible because he's lazy, hates
00:06:27.640 | his work, and so that would make him working five days a sin.
00:06:33.920 | Sixth, in Christ, work is sanctified so that aspects of the curse that came on work have
00:06:42.760 | been removed and it can be joyfully and satisfying as we do it in Christ's name, whether it's
00:06:48.960 | five or six.
00:06:50.520 | It's not like there's big drudgery in six.
00:06:53.400 | There doesn't have to be at all.
00:06:55.440 | And lastly, the last qualification of my advocacy for six is in the new age that we've already
00:07:02.440 | entered into in measure, Christ has become our eternal rest.
00:07:10.040 | There is a soul rest, a Sabbath rest that we found in Christ, which means pervading
00:07:15.960 | all of our work.
00:07:17.360 | Five, six, four days we are restful in Christ.
00:07:23.200 | So when all is said and done, Tony, here's my...
00:07:27.000 | The question is, have we found the rhythm of work and refreshment that points to the
00:07:35.240 | greatness of the risen Christ and that leads to strong faith and sustained joyful energy
00:07:43.280 | for fulfilling all the various callings, plural, that a person has to the glory of God?
00:07:50.800 | Brilliant.
00:07:51.800 | Thank you, Pastor John.
00:07:53.000 | Those are very helpful categories in thinking through our work weeks.
00:07:56.600 | Well, tomorrow a listener wants you, Pastor John, to explain the watershed differences
00:08:01.720 | between Calvinism and Arminianism to a teenager.
00:08:05.840 | That should be very interesting.
00:08:07.560 | Well, for everything you need to know about this podcast and to send Pastor John your
00:08:12.200 | question, your carefully crafted, concise, and specific question, go to desiringgod.org/askpastorjohn.
00:08:17.680 | I'm your host, Tony Ranke.
00:08:22.440 | We'll see you tomorrow.
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