Ezekiel 20:19-21 — I am the Lord your God; walk in my statutes, and keep my judgments, and do them; and hallow my sabbaths; and they shall be a sign between me and you, that ye may know that I am the Lord your God. Notwithstanding, the children rebelled against me: they walked not in my statutes, neither kept my judgments to do them, which if a man do, he shall even live in them; they polluted my sabbaths. Then I said, I would pour out my fury upon them, to accomplish my anger against them in the wilderness.

Before we get started, let’s be clear. I am a hypocrite. I’m not nearly as good at walking the walk as I am at talking the talk. Many of these pieces are addressed firmly to myself and describe what I’m stretching to. They’re definitely not meant to make anybody wriggle more than me!
Now, with that appetizer out of the way, let’s turn to the main course which is a return to the question rather formally referred to as “Sabbath Day Observance”. How are we to spend our Sundays? I know there is no topic on which I have written more often — but then there is hardly any issue which is more ignored in common practice, and this passage in Ezekiel and many others make it clear that it is dear to God’s heart too.
I’ve written before about the importance of the Sabbath as a sign, of the importance of laying down burdens on the Sabbath, and of right employment on the Sabbath. It is that last topic that I was prompted to return to today.
I’m not sure why this is top of mind today — other than the fact that today is Sunday. I do know that I’m saddened every Sunday when I hear of people skipping church because they’ve got a golf game, or leaving the worship service early because they “need” to get to the restaurant before the masses.
There’s a really bad argument freely advanced to justify all kinds of Sunday activity. It runs along the lines of “Well that’s the way the system works. If I don’t fit in, I’ll miss out.”
In December 1841, the Reverend Robert Murray McCheyne, outraged at the proposal by the Directors of the Edinburgh and Glasgow Railway to open it’s lines on Sunday, wrote:
Is it wise to take the interpretation of God’s will concerning the Lord’s day from “men of the world,” from infidels, scoffers, men of unholy lives, men who are sand-blind in all divine things, men who are the enemies of all righteousness, who quote Scripture freely, as Satan did, to deceive and betray?
The argument may be nearly 175 years old, but what was true then is true today. Now as I said above, I can’t get too self-righteous about all of this. I sometimes travel for business reasons on Sunday, I like to watch professional sports on Sunday, and once in a very rare while Myra and I will lunch out on a Sunday. All I can say is that we try pretty hard to set aside wordly matters on a Sunday, and take it as a day of rest. And from time to time we revisit the subject and see if there are any ways we can tweak the routine and get that bit closer. Perhaps one day we may be able to claim a small part of a great promise:
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, honorable; and shalt honor him, not doing thine own ways, nor finding thine own pleasure, nor speaking thine own words: then shalt thou delight thyself in the Lord; and I will cause thee to ride upon the high places of the earth, and feed thee with the heritage of Jacob thy father: for the mouth of the Lord hath spoken it. (Isaiah 58:13-14)
Jesus reminds us that “The sabbath was made for man, and not man for the sabbath” (Mark 2:27). I think that’s why I am driven back, time and again, to this issue. If I honor the sabbath, if I remember, the blessings will be great indeed.