Isaiah 58:13-14 If you turn away your foot from the sabbath, from doing your pleasure on my holy day; and call the sabbath a delight… I suppose the essence of this Christian Sabbath was never more perfectly described than in the words of the prophet. 1. The first principle of the Christian Sabbath is that there should be one day in the week on which we are not doing our own ways, nor finding our own pleasure, nor speaking our own words, that is to say, the Christian Sabbath is not to be, like the civic Sunday, rest from work, important as that may be, but it is a rest from self, which is all-important, and is, indeed, the creation and the preservation of the spiritual in man. It is a rest from self, not to speak our own words on that day, not to take our own pleasures, not to adopt our own way. I think we see what is meant if we put it in this way. Our life as men is literally rooted in God, and its health depends on our knowing it and recognizing it. 2. Now, when we have recognized that this is the purpose of the day we still have to consider how that purpose is best accomplished. According to the practice of the Old Testament, and, apparently according to the intention of the New, the sanctuary, the place of public worship, is the means by which that can be accomplished. 3. I think we ought to honestly face the question which is often raised at the present time, whether the life I am describing cannot be maintained without the sanctuary. Men say frequently to-day that they find they can really worship better in their own homes, and still more in the open country, than in the assembly of the house of God. Now, the only danger I see in that position is that by the very necessity of the ease it violates the first requirement of the Sabbath as it is here stated. You stay at home in your house or you go out into the country on Sunday. In doing that you are going your own way, you are seeking your own pleasure, you are following your own bent — that is to say, you are violating the very principle on which this Sabbath rests. And it does not seem very improbable that when you have violated the very principle at the beginning you will succeed in recovering it at the end. (R. F. Horton.) Parallel Verses KJV: If thou turn away thy foot from the sabbath, from doing thy pleasure on my holy day; and call the sabbath a delight, the holy of the LORD, honourable; and shalt honour him, not doing thine own ways, nor finding thine own pleasure, nor speaking thine own words: |
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