Christ ChurchHappy Sabbath (King’s Cross)
INTRODUCTION
A common phrase heard in our churches, especially on the Lord’s Day or leading up to it, is “Happy Sabbath.” But what does this mean? What exactly is the Sabbath and what makes it so happy? And are there ways in which, under glad obedience to Christ, we can order our lives to make the most of this great gift from God to His people?
THE TEXT
10 Now He was teaching in one of the synagogues on the Sabbath. 11 And behold, there was a woman who had a spirit of infirmity eighteen years, and was bent over and could in no way raise herself up. 12 But when Jesus saw her, He called her to Him and said to her, “Woman, you are loosed from your infirmity.” 13 And He laid His hands on her, and immediately she was made straight, and glorified God.
14 But the ruler of the synagogue answered with indignation, because Jesus had healed on the Sabbath; and he said to the crowd, “There are six days on which men ought to work; therefore come and be healed on them, and not on the Sabbath day.”
15 The Lord then answered him and said, “Hypocrite! Does not each one of you on the Sabbath loose his ox or donkey from the stall, and lead it away to water it? 16 So ought not this woman, being a daughter of Abraham, whom Satan has bound—think of it—for eighteen years, be loosed from this bond on the Sabbath?” 17 And when He said these things, all His adversaries were put to shame; and all the multitude rejoiced for all the glorious things that were done by Him (Lk. 13:10–17 NKJV).
THE FOURTH COMMANDMENT
“Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy. Six days you shall labor and do all your work, but the seventh day is the Sabbath of the Lord your God. In it you shall do no work: you, nor your son, nor your daughter, nor your male servant, nor your female servant, nor your cattle, nor your stranger who is within your gates. For in six days the Lord made the heavens and the earth, the sea, and all that is in them, and rested the seventh day. Therefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and hallowed it” (Ex. 20:8–11 NKJV, see also Deut. 5:12–15).
WORSHIP
The Lord’s Day is first kept holy by the reverent and joyful worship of God. While Sunday mornings are set apart for this public worship, that worship is meant to flow out into the rest of the day in our homes. Likewise, as this Sabbath is now observed on the first day of the week, the following six days of labor is meant to be performed for the glory of God and out of the rest and refreshment we have in Christ.
“Six days shall work be done, but the seventh day is a Sabbath of solemn rest, a holy convocation. You shall do no work on it; it is the Sabbath of the Lord in all your dwellings” (Lev. 23:3).
REST
The Lord’s Day was given for genuine rest—for the family, the servants, and even the animals. This means that we cease from our normal vocations and routines, not treating Sunday afternoons like any other day. Rather than viewing this as a restrictive burden, this call to lay your usual labor and routines aside is meant to be liberating for God’s people, making the Sabbath a true delight.
“If because of the sabbath, you turn your foot from doing your own pleasure on My holy day, and call the Sabbath a delight, the holy day of the Lord honorable, and honor it, desisting from your own ways, from seeking your own pleasure and speaking your own word, then you will take delight in the Lord, and I will make you ride on the heights of the earth, and I will feed you with the heritage of Jacob your father, for the mouth of the Lord has spoken” (Isa. 58:13–14 NASB95).
CONCLUSION
The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath (Mk. 2:27). The Lord’s Day is not primarily about rules and regulations, do’s and don’ts, but embracing what God has done and is doing for us. The woman with the spirit of infirmity is a daughter of Abraham, a picture of the church. Just as she was “loosed” from her burden and pain on the Sabbath, so are we “loosed” from our burdens and sins in Christ, who is our Sabbath rest (Heb. 4).
Postmill Parenting (The Well-Pleased Father #2) (King’s Cross)
Lindsey GardnerINTRODUCTION
Postmillennialism is the doctrine that teaches that over the course of history, the Great Commission will be accomplished: the nations will be discipled, the earth will be full of the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea, that God will save the world before Christ returns in glory. This will be accomplished not by force of arms or political maneuvering, but by the preaching of the gospel and the work of the Spirit.
In many ways this is simply an application of the doctrine of sanctification applied to history. Sanctification is the doctrine of growth in Christ: “Being confident of this very thing, that He which began a good work in you will perform it until the day of Jesus Christ” (Phil. 1:6, cf. Eph. 1:13-14, 2 Cor. 3:18, 2 Pet. 1:3-4). This growth in grace is driven by faith not by works (Gal. 3:1-5). And therefore, Christian parenting is no different.
Parenting in faith is very different from parenting in fear. Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen (Heb. 11:1). But it is not merely optimism or high hopes; it is faith in the promises of your Father.
The Text: “…As for me, this is my covenant with them, saith the LORD; My spirit that is upon thee, and my words which I have put in thy mouth, shall not depart out of thy mouth, nor out of the mouth of thy seed, nor out of the mouth of thy seed’s seed, saith the LORD, from henceforth and forever” (Is. 59:16-21).
SUMMARY OF THE TEXT
The prophet is in the midst of describing the predicament of Israel. Their iniquities have separated them from God (Is. 59:2), their hands are defiled with blood (Is. 59:3), they run to do evil (Is. 59:7), they grope like blindmen (Is. 59:11), and no one knows truth or judgment (Is. 59:11-15). And in that condition God saw that there was no man, no intercessor for His people, and so He determined to save them Himself, with His own arm and His own righteousness (Is. 59:16). So He armed Himself for this great mission, and the mission was to bring justice to the world, until the whole world fears the name of the Lord, from the east to the west, the Spirit of the Lord leading the way, like the standard of a great army (Is. 59:17-19). And God the Redeemer will save all who turn to Him, and this New Covenant promise not only includes Him putting His Spirit and His Word in the mouths of those who first turn to Him, but He will also do the same for their children and grandchildren forever (Is. 59:20-21).
MORE NEW COVENANT PROMISES
“And they shall be my people, and I will be their God: and I will give them one heart, and one way, that they may fear me forever, for the good of them, and of their children after them: and I will make an everlasting covenant with them, that I will not turn away from them, to do them good; but I will put my fear in their hearts, that they shall not depart from me” (Jer. 32:38-40).
“And David my servant shall be king over them; and they all shall have one shepherd: they shall also walk in my judgments, and observe my statutes, and do them. And they shall dwell in the land that I have given unto Jacob my servant, wherein your fathers have dwelt; and they shall dwell therein, even they, and their children, and their children’s children for ever: and my servant David shall be their prince forever. Moreover, I will make a covenant of peace with them; it shall be an everlasting covenant with them: and I will place them, and multiply them, and will set my sanctuary in the midst of them for evermore” (Ezek. 37:24-26).
THE TRAJECTORY
Jesus said that the Kingdom would come like leaven in a loaf, like a mustard seed in the ground growing up into a great tree, and therefore, the growth of Christians is also like that. It is organic, relatively slow, and hard to see in the moment, but it is obvious over time. The same thing is true of the growth of our children in faith and obedience and wisdom.
Not only that, but we need to be thinking about our grandchildren. The loving and teaching and discipline that we are administering is aimed generationally: for our “grandchildren forever” – to a thousand generations (cf. Dt. 7:9). We are the thin stems poking out of the ground or maybe slender stalks with three wispy branches that will one day be great trees providing shade.
APPLICATIONS
Believe the promises of God: Do you believe that Jesus Christ is your Redeemer, your Intercessor? Very good. Now you must also believe that He is the Redeemer and Intercessor of your children and grandchildren. “That in blessing I will bless thee, and in multiplying I will multiply thy seed as the stars of the heaven, and as the sand which is upon the sea shore; and thy seed shall possess the gate of his enemies…” (Gen. 22:17). Do you believe?
This faith is first of all relieved, joyful, and full of peace. There is a massive difference between parenting in fear and parenting in faith. Your children can sense the difference: the aroma of faith is like bread baking in the oven.
You are raising your children to leave and form families: “Train up a child in the way he should go: and when he is old, he will not depart from it” (Prov. 22:6). Your goal is not merely to not be embarrassed today, or to keep your kids out of prison. Your goal is that they would marry Christians and raise their children to be stronger, wiser Christians than you, and repeat to a thousand generations.
But this means that you must be thinking this way when they are born, when they are toddlers, when they are still in elementary school. Broadly speaking, think of teaching and discipline like teaching your child how to ride a bike. When they are young, you hover and do everything for them (lots of correction/frequent spankings); during elementary school, you begin letting them peddle and balance (while holding them up, spanking tapering off); and sometime in high school you begin letting go (transitioning to conversations/teaching).
And all of it by faith in the sure promises of your Well-Pleased Father.
Delighting in Your People (The Well-Pleased Father #1) (King’s Cross)
Introduction
We are a nation of bastards. A bastard is an illegitimate son, a son born out of wedlock, a son without a covenant father, and thereby at some level, abandoned and rejected by his father. This has been enacted by mass fornication, adultery, divorce, and in its most violent form, abortion. Even in the church where there is often far more cohesion, there is still sometimes great tension and distance in our families, where there ought to be delight.
This fatherlessness and generational static have their root cause in our alienation from our Heavenly Father. You cannot reject God the Father Almighty and end up in any kind of happy place. If there is tension between fathers and children, it is because we are not in full fellowship with the Father. Every good and perfect gift is from above, and comes down from the Father of Lights, in whom there is no variation or shadow of turning (Js. 1:17), including the gift of delighting in your family.
The Text: “And Jesus, when He was baptized, went up straightway out of the water: and lo, the heavens were opened unto Him, and he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove, and lighting upon Him: and lo a voice from heaven, saying, this is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased” (Mt. 3:16-17).
Summary of the Text
The Father shows up directly in the gospels just a couple of times, and both times He says almost the same thing. The first is at Christ’s baptism: “this is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased” (Mt. 3:17, Mk. 1:11, Lk. 3:22). The second is the transfiguration: “This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased” (Mt. 17:5). What we learn in the gospel directly from God the Father is that He is well pleased with His beloved Son.
Restored to the Father
Eph. 3:14-15 says, “For this cause I bow my knees unto the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, of whom every family in heaven and earth is named.” This means that families exist because God is Triune: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. All human fatherhood gets its meaning and purpose from God the Father. And when the Father shows up, the central thing He wants the whole world to know is that He is well pleased with His beloved Son.
Many men did not have fathers or else their fathers were absent or harsh, and this is why God sent His only Son into the world: “And he shall turn the heart of the fathers to the children, and the heart of the children to the fathers, lest I come and strike the earth with a curse” (Mal. 4:6, cf. Lk. 1:17). Generational dysfunction and animosity are burdens, and when sin is not dealt with, it is a great curse. But Christ came to bear the curse of sin and heal the generations. He does this by taking away our guilt and shame, but He restores families fundamentally by restoring us to God the Father. “For He [Christ] is our peace… For through Him [Christ] we both have access by one Spirit unto the Father” (Eph. 2:18). That Spirit is the same Spirit that came upon Jesus in His baptism, the same Spirit that caused the Father to proclaim, “this is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased” (Gal. 4:6).
Delighting in Your People
Our delight in our people is grounded in the delight of God in His people in His Son. “The LORD thy God in the midst of thee is mighty; he will save, he will rejoice over thee with joy; he will rest in his love, he will joy over thee with singing” (Zeph. 3:17). This is not God rejoicing over a perfect people; this is God rejoicing over a people He is saving. This is not a blind love; it is faithful love. It is a delight in what is and what will be.
This is the bedrock of Christian family life: we are The Delighted-In and so we are Delight-Full. Our Father is well-pleased with us. He rejoices over us with singing. It is His holy, infinite delight in us that is to spill over into our homes. This infinite joy is plenty for every Christian, but he who finds a wife finds a good thing and has obtained favor from the Lord (Prov. 18:22). Children are the inheritance of the Lord; they are His great blessing and reward (Ps. 127:3-5, Ps. 128). Christ is the pool into which the pleasures of God pour infinitely (Ps. 16:11), and if you are in Christ, that pleasure pours out of you.
Delighting in Creation
This delight is not only directly in your people. God has also created a universe that expresses His delight, and it was created for the enjoyment of God and His people. Delight is a gift, but shared delight multiplies the gift and binds us together. This was part of God’s point in His reply to Job’s great complaints: God points Job to His favorite parts of the universe and invites Job to join Him in ruling the weather patterns, riding constellations, caring for ravens and goats and unicorns, and playing with dragons (Job 38ff).
Our Father delights in His work and creation, and therefore, this delight in work and creation should mark Christian families: work, hobbies, sports, games, camping, fishing…
Applications
The center of this delight is a bloody cross where all our sin was nailed and crushed. This is not a humanistic optimism or a stiff upper lip. This is gospel grace. Sin paid for. Debts forgiven. Adopted by the Father. As you have been forgiven, so forgive. Confess, forgive, walk in the light. No backlogs. No bitterness. No hidden sin.
This is also central to discipline and correction. Christian discipline restores joy, which means it must be your baseline. Is your discipline and correction doing that? Parents, your job is to make sure that it actually yields peace and joy (Heb. 12:11).
A Christian family should be marked by playful delight: joyful work, chores, wrestling, tickling, jokes, laughter, singing, dancing, adventures, and games. And in the midst of it all, many, many words of praise, delight, gratitude, and love. Why? Because this is the way of your Father.
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