by Jason Cunningham | March 30, 2024
In the opening article in this three-part series on the doctrine of the Christian Sabbath as it is observed in the Presbyterian Church in America (PCA), I provided a brief analysis of the doctrine, defending what is sometimes referred to as the “Puritan view.” In this second post, I more closely examine the “no recreation” clause of WCF 21.8 and its primary biblical proof text, Isaiah 58:13-14 as it applies to Sabbath-keeping in the New Testament. In the final post of this three-part series, I intend to provide a working definition of confessional adoption that upholds the doctrinal Standards of the PCA without requiring “gnat-straining” over every single word.
Applying the Christian Sabbath
We have seen that the Christian Sabbath is an ongoing creation ordinance, expressed more fully in the Law and continuing today as the Lord’s Day, a new covenant eschatological sign pointing to our anticipated eternal rest.[1]Recognizing these doctrinal connections between the Sabbath and the Lord’s Day (i.e., Christian Sabbath) guards us against the error of creating a radical discontinuity between Old and New Testament. If the Lord’s Day is stripped of its continuity to creation and the moral Law of God, we have to surmise that either the fourth commandment is of no value to the Christian other than possibly a reminder to rest once a week, that the ten commandments have actually become nine, or that the evangelical church has been breaking the Saturday Sabbath for the last two thousand years. Such recognition rightly validates the Old Testament as generally normative for understanding not only the importance of Sabbath-keeping, but specifically applying appropriate particular Old Testament passages to our Sabbath practice in the Christian church.
Before advancing to an exegesis of Isaiah 58:13-14, I want to make two points of practical application from the previous section. First, we must dispel the notion of the Sabbath as a day of oppression and restriction. The unconscious tendency for many Christians – and likely many ordination candidates as well – is to recoil from the idea that the Sabbath Day is the “best” day of the week. We are all too quick to misunderstand the Lord’s Day as a day defined by “what we cannot do” rather than the day defined by “what we get to do” as beings created “to glorify God and enjoy Him forever” (WSC 1).
The fourth commandment expresses to us a positive blessing in its keeping. Instead of asking what types of activities I am restricted from on the Lord’s Day, we should be asking “what is the best way to maximize my joy in Christ by keeping the Lord’s Day holy, as the Christian Sabbath?” The Sabbath Day is called a “day of rest” (Gen. 2, Exod. 20). While it may seem obvious, the point in need of recognition is in the phrase that resting from our normal weekly activities for an entire day is positively a good thing. Such as been the case about this rest since God commanded it. It is imperative to view Sabbath passages with the perspective of obedience as a positive command.
What is Your Pleasure? Examining of Isaiah 58:13-14
If you turn back your foot from the Sabbath, from doing your pleasure on my holy day, and call the Sabbath a delight and the holy day of the Lord honorable; if you honor it, not going your own ways, or seeking your own pleasure, or talking idly; then you shall take delight in the Lord, and I will make you ride on the heights of the earth; I will feed you with the heritage of Jacob your father, for the mouth of the Lord has spoken. (Isaiah 58:13-14)
As we begin our analysis of Isaiah 58:13-14, we need to focus initially on a single word, pleasure. As the scriptural proof text for the “no recreation” clause in WCF 21.8, the primary argument for or against recreation on the Sabbath concerns the meaning of the word translated “pleasure” in verse 13. One common argument presented when stating a difference to WCF 21.8 is that the word “pleasure” is better translated “business,” and that thus the Confession demands what Scripture does not by forbidding “recreation” (i.e., something other than “business”) on the Sabbath. But one implication of this objection is that the 120 pastors, scholars, and theologians involved in the Westminster Assembly were grossly mistaken on the meaning of this word.[2] As Van Dixhoorn notes in his introduction to Confessing the Faith: A Readers Guide to the Westminster Confession of Faith, “The confession offers paragraphs written for the sole purpose of helping Christians to understand scriptural words and phrases.”[3] This is certainly not to say that the Westminster Divines were inerrant, or that the meaning of the Hebrew word is not difficult to translate. The point I am making here is merely to encourage that church courts exercise caution when a recently graduated seminary student states his difference to the “no recreation” clause based solely on his presumption that 120 ministers and theologians seeking to reform the Church of England at a time in history when doctrine and theology were often matters of life and death, did not understand the meaning of a Hebrew word.
That being said, even if the word “pleasure” ought to be read or translated as “business,” the larger context of the passage yet supports the Confession’s formulation of the doctrine of the Christian Sabbath. Initially, we need to point out that Isaiah 58 is not exclusively about the Sabbath. It is included in a broader context going back two chapters where Isaiah is proclaiming a blessing on all those who stop profaning the Sabbath by ceasing to do things that please themselves and instead are to choose activities on the Sabbath that please God (56:4).
When we get to chapter 58, Isaiah repeats his admonition that the people of Israel stop seeking their own pleasure on the Sabbath, but he is contrasting Sabbath practice with hypocritical fasting. Taken together with chapter 56, we see that the people are profaning the Sabbath not just with works of evil, but with everyday activities (business or pleasure) from which they should rest on the Sabbath. As noted above, at the beginning of chapter 58, Isaiah is addressing a people that are practicing regular worship by fasting (58:2-3). In fact, they are pointing to their fasting as the litmus test of their righteousness and wondering why God was not blessing them (58:3).
Although Young rightly points out that the people’s worship practice is hypocritical, we can make an immediate useful observation here.[4] While corporate worship is part of faithful Sabbath-keeping, outward forms of worship cannot stand alone as the sole measure of obedience. The solution that Isaiah offers to Israel’s hypocritical fasting is to observe the Sabbath as God intended it to be observed, with a whole heart. Isaiah plainly says their fasting is hypocritical because it is coupled with the oppression of workers and the seeking after personal pleasures. Again, Young points out that “it is the pleasure of man and not that of God that comes to the fore.”[5]
In the second part of verse fourteen, Isaiah encourages Israel positively to view the Sabbath not as a day of restriction, but rather as a day of delight. And how do we make it a day of delight but by not going our own way, not seeking our own pleasures, and not conducting our normal business? Rather than narrowly focusing on the specific meaning in verse thirteen as either business or pleasure, the thrust of the passage is contrasting the difference between doing whatever we want on the Sabbath versus doing specifically whatever pleases God according to His authoritative direction.[6]
The point of this brief overview is to show that focusing on the word “pleasure” or “business” misses the point of the passage. If we are to call the Sabbath a delight and honor it before the Lord, we must turn away from going our own way and seeking our own pleasure on this day of rest and worship. Finally, it is instructive to point out before we turn to the language of the Confession that in articulating the requirement that the people of Israel stop going their own way, Isaiah is not merely telling the people to stop sinning on the Sabbath. This would imply that sinful behavior was acceptable other days of the week. Rather, “going your own way” refers to the ordinary activities of both business and pleasure that take place on other days of the week.
To summarize Isaiah 58:13-14, the proof text for the “no recreation” clause in WCF 21.8, we encroach upon the Sabbath when we prioritize our own pleasure over that which pleases God. This should not be a strange concept to the Christian who, like the Psalmist, delights in God’s Law (Ps.1). When it comes to the Sabbath, we are commanded to cease from normal weekly activity because God wants us to take greater pleasure in both worship and rest. While we find commonality in the body of Christ by setting aside time for worship on the first day of the week, our individual or family Sabbath practices will find some variation depending on our normal weekly activity and the particulars of our family situations. This is important to keep in mind as we move to an examination of the “no recreation” clause found in the Confession.
The Confession Speaks: Examining WCF 21.8
This Sabbath is to be kept holy unto the Lord when men, after a due preparing of their hearts, and ordering of their common affairs beforehand, do not only observe an holy rest all the day from their own works, words, and thoughts about their worldly employments and recreations, but also are taken up the whole time in the public and private exercises of His worship, and in the duties of necessity and mercy. (WCF 21.8)
The point we must continually keep in mind as we examine the language of the Confession relating to the doctrine of the Christian Sabbath is that Isaiah 58:13-14 instructs us to cease conducting our normal weekly activities on the Sabbath – whether recreation or business –in order instead to focus on our delight in the Lord.
Returning to the Confession, the eighth paragraph of chapter 21 “Of Religious Worship and the Sabbath Day” discusses the practical application of Christian Sabbath-keeping. We will not attempt to examine each line in great detail, but we must first note that proper preparation for observance of the Day is necessary. The language speaks of ordering affairs and preparing our hearts. Each week, we should be thinking about and planning for a restful day of worship that is distinctly different than the other six days of the week. This preparation will vary depending on your familial and vocational situation. After laying out the necessity of preparation, the Confession proceeds to the statement about “worldly employments and recreations” that many candidates for office in the PCA typically indicate their difference with the Confession.[7]
The question one must ask is why the Westminster Divines chose to include a resting from both employments andrecreations. As noted earlier, the language is not particularly controversial if we understand the Sabbath as a day to rest (cease) from our normal weekly activity in both employment and recreation. However, wrangling over application tends to take place in the conceptual space afforded by the Confession’s silence. Our normal weekly routine may include recreations that need to cease, but our Sabbath may include activities that we refer to as recreations that are set apart as unique and conducive to our rest and worship. In other words, in addition to worship, the entire Sabbath should look and feel different than the rest of the week, and that distinction should be delightful to believers. The heart of the matter is whether adoption of the Confession’s language here binds one’s conscience to cease from every activity which might be described as recreational.
Recreational Context: The Surprising Terseness of Confessional Language
To achieve a better understanding of the chosen language of the Confession on this point of recreations, it is instructive to provide some historical context.[8] The Confession was written during a time of great political and theological upheaval. The intent of the Assembly was to respond to errant theology and thereby reform the Church of England. They perceived a looming threat of Antinomianism (i.e., rejection of the moral law as a rule of the Christian life), especially as made manifest in the Book of Sports published in 1618 at the direction of King James I.
James’ book was published in response to an earlier work (1595) by the Puritan author Nicolas Bownde entitled The True Doctrine of the Sabbath in which Bownde condemned as profane a number of recreational activities commonly taking place on the Lord’s Day. Ironically, in both publications, the authors were intent on providing the people with a particular list of permissible activities while at the same time recoiling from a charge of legalism. This provides important historical insight into the language on the Confession but is not intended to imply that the Assembly overstepped the bounds of Scripture by being influenced by a peculiar historical controversy. Rather, the language of the Confession is unexpectedly vague by intentionally leaving out a specific list of allowed and prohibited recreations.
Taken together with our understanding of Isaiah, we can assert that the language of the Confession is appropriately nonspecific. In making the Sabbath a “set apart” day, we should cease from weekly business and recreations that are normally incorporated into our typical activities throughout the week. That which can be done during the week, but which would distract from the purposes of the Lord’s Day if pursued on the day of worship, should be reserved to the six days following the Lord’s Day. However, the decision not to specify activities – whether employments or recreations – preserves the timelessness of the Confession for both contemporary and future generations. The composition of the Confession also protects Christian liberty in its specific application. This is important to keep in mind as we turn to the topic of confessional adoption and its meaning in our third and final post in this series.
[1] Editor’s Note: See Jason Cunningham, A Day Set Apart: Revisiting the “No Recreation” Clause of WCF 21.8, Part I, March 2024.
[2] Chad Van Dixhoorn. Confessing the Faith: A Reader’s Guide to the Westminster Confession of Faith. (Carlisle: Banner of Truth Trust, 2014), xvii.
[3] Ibid, xxix-xx
[4]Edward J. Young, The Book of Isaiah: The English Text, with Introduction, Exposition, and Notes. Vol. III. (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1965), 416.
[5] Ibid, 426.
[6] For a thorough examination of this passage in light of the Sabbath, see McGraw, The Day of Worship, 37-47.
[7] As noted in the PCA’s Book of Church Order (21-5, 24-5), a candidate for ordination is required to state any differences he has with the Westminster Confession and the Larger and Shorter Catechisms. It is the duty of the Presbytery to grant an exception to the candidate’s differences upon an adequate determination that those differences neither prove to be out of accord with the fundamentals of the system of doctrine nor strike at the “vitals of religion.” Having been granted any exceptions, the candidate must then vow to “receive and adopt the Confession of Faith and the Catechisms of this Church…”
[8] For a more detailed examination of the historical context and the controversies surrounding Westminster and the Sabbath, see J.V. Fesko, The Theology of the Westminster Standards (Wheaton: Crossway, 2014), 283-297.
Jason Cunningham is a PCA Ruling Elder serving on the session of Chestnut Mountain Presbyterian Church in Flowery Branch, GA.