Just Too Busy

We live in a 24/7, always-on-the-move kind of world. There is always somewhere to be, something that must be done. Technology allows us to bring work home in our pockets. We receive phone calls, text messages, and emails that need our attention—sometimes occupying space in our minds at any hour of the day. Laundry needs to be done, dishes must be put away, the lawn needs mowing, and children must be fed and taught. Then we pick up our Bibles and read about the Sabbath and say to ourselves, “I don’t have the time to set aside a whole day to rest. There is just too much to do.” But then, do we really need to worry about it? The Sabbath was just a command for Israel under the Old Covenant, wasn’t it?

Guy Prentiss Waters steps into our busy lives with The Sabbath as Rest and Hope for the People of God. He shows that the Sabbath is more than just a law; it’s an ordinance rooted in creation and a gracious gift from God to His people. The Sabbath, as Waters explains, is a day given by God “to remind us of some of the most important truths about himself, the world, and ourselves—he created us to worship him and to enjoy fellowship with him; he has redeemed sinners at the cost of his own Son, Jesus Christ; he has prepared a heavenly rest for each and every one of his people.”

Therefore, Waters' book is worth setting aside time in our busy lives to stop and read. This book traces the Bible’s teaching on the Sabbath from the very beginning through Jesus’ redemptive work. Waters shows us that God has intended for His people to enjoy His rest from the very beginning, something that has been secured for all of God’s people through the cross of Christ.

God’s Intention from Creation

Waters first focuses on God’s designation of the seventh day at creation. We read in Genesis 2:3 that “God blessed the seventh day and made it holy.” Waters argues that the blessing of this day connects it to the previous creation blessings. The birds, sea creatures, and Adam and Eve were all created and blessed by God to be fruitful and multiply. Therefore, Waters concludes the seventh day would be “marked by fruitfulness and fullness appropriate to that day.”

The day is also designated as holy, which sets it apart from the prior six days. Therefore, Waters writes, that day is not simply a day marked off for the cessation of labor. The seventh day is marked off for worship, leading Waters to conclude that “the ultimate characteristic of the day is worship, a worship that is tied to fruitfulness and fullness.”

Here, Waters helps recalibrate our understanding of the Sabbath. We may be tempted to think of the Sabbath primarily, or even exclusively, in relation to the Old Covenant law. Waters helpfully shows that the Sabbath actually has its foundations in creation and draws us to God’s intention for mankind. God’s intent, from the very beginning, was to bring His covenant people into His rest, which is to enjoy the full delight of His presence in worship. This was offered to Adam in the Garden. However, because he broke the covenant with God by taking the forbidden fruit, this rest was lost to us.

This, in turn, helps us to think more clearly about the gospel. Not only is God, through Christ, forgiving our sins, but He is also restoring us to our created purpose. We were made to enjoy God and worship Him forever. This is the blessing of true Sabbath rest. As Waters points out, God has acted in Christ to make this rest available to us once again. We begin now to enjoy nearness to God and true worship of Him, all made possible through Christ. This points us to our future enjoyment of that rest in its fullness. Waters says, “In Christ, we continue to observe the weekly Sabbath as a pointer toward our future rest and a help in our present pilgrimage.”

Rest Delayed

This provides a helpful framework for understanding the Sabbath in relation to the Mosaic law and the prophets. Waters helps us to see that the codifying of the Sabbath in the law was about more than just a day to rest from work. This was a day of holy resting. It was a day for worship. To observe the Sabbath as God commanded was both an expression of trust that He would provide and an act of covenant obedience. It was to worship Him faithfully as His people. Therefore, Israel’s refusal to honor the Sabbath was a refusal to worship God and resulted in their expulsion from the land.

Through the prophets, the Lord promised a restoration in which the reality of God’s Sabbath rest would be realized. However, as Waters points out, it was not the restoration to the land that brought about this rest. It would come through the work of God to produce true worship from the hearts of His people. It would come through spiritual renewal, cleansing from unrighteousness, and the provision of a new heart enabled to keep the law of God by the Spirit of God.

Here, Waters helps to reorient our thinking about the purpose of the Sabbath. Israel’s Sabbath worship was, in part, a day to remember what God had done (Deuteronomy 5:15). Their pause was to reflect on His mercy to them in their redemption. This was for their good, and it is for our good as well.

Waters helps us to see that we have missed the point if our thoughts about the Sabbath revolve around trying to figure out what we can and cannot do. In fact, he helps us to see that the Sabbath is actually a day to do something. We are to gather with God’s people to worship, a foretaste of the true rest we will enter into at the end of the age.

The Sabbath is a day to delight in our deliverance. Once again, God has redeemed a people out of bondage. We were enslaved to sin (Romans 6:6), but Christ has redeemed us through His blood. We were children of wrath (Ephesians 2:3), but Christ has satisfied the wrath of God against us (Romans 3:25). Therefore, the Sabbath is about pausing to worship the God who has redeemed us. It serves to remind us of His grace to us in Jesus.

Rest Secured—and Remembered

The latter half of Waters’ book focuses on Jesus’ own interactions with the Sabbath. He taught the true meaning of the Sabbath, freeing it from the legalistic burdens imposed by the Jewish religious authorities. He observed the Sabbath rightly, worshiping the Father as our perfect Redeemer. Through His death and resurrection, He restores humanity to the rest intended from the beginning—enjoying God’s presence and worshiping Him.

Waters very helpfully shows how this led early Christians to move the Sabbath from Saturday to Sunday. He clearly shows that the shift to Sunday was in response to the resurrection of our Lord. His resurrection, as Waters shows, establishes the new creation in which God’s people will eventually experience the fullness of His intended rest. We will dwell with Him on the new Earth, fully freed from our sins. We will worship Him truly and enjoy Him forever. This leads Waters to conclude that “the weekly Sabbath offers us regular reminders of the heavenly home that awaits us and that our earthly pilgrimage will one day come to a welcome conclusion.”

Here, Waters helps us see that setting aside time every Sunday to stop everything and gather with God’s people is not meant to be a burden. Indeed, it only becomes burdensome when our idea of what we truly need becomes misaligned. What we need, more than anything, is peace with God. We need Him, and He has brought us to Himself in Christ. Through Christ, He is bringing us into the rest He established from the beginning—a rest where we will behold the face of the one who died and was raised for us. We will worship Him in the blessed enjoyment of His presence forever.

Hope for the People of God

Waters helps us to rightly understand the goal of the Sabbath and thus see the Sabbath as the source of hope that it is meant to be. Each week, God directs us to stop and gather with His people to be reminded of who He is. He brings us near, gathers us under His word, and reminds us that Christ has acted once and for all to save us.

Our weekly gatherings are a reminder that the best is yet to come. There is a day coming when our toil will be no more. Our longing to see our Father face to face will be fulfilled. We will behold Him and enjoy His presence fully as we were meant to do from the beginning. Our worship will be made pure in the perfection we will enter into. We will enjoy God perpetually through the rest Christ has secured for us.

Every Sunday serves to remind us of this. God works through corporate worship to nourish our souls by reminding us that He has redeemed us through Christ. The Sabbath serves to remind us that we’re simply passing through this world on our way to our true home, where we will experience the rest we were made to enjoy. Therefore, in the grace and power of God, we press on to that great rest secured for us by the cross of Christ.

You can purchase this book through our 10ofThose bookstore.