– 12 Min Read
It is always a sad day when you find yourself disagreeing with John MacArthur. It almost makes you want to rethink your entire position and conform to the view that he has. People typically side with him partly because of how he handles the scriptures so delicately and carefully but also because of his confidence. The man preaches with authority and great confidence. This is one of the reasons I am personally drawn to him. Because you never see him question himself in the pulpit. He never says, “I don’t know what this means.” Or, “I guess this text could mean this…” John MacArthur is one of my preaching heroes and always will be. I hold him in the highest regard. But I do think that his take and handle on the Sabbath from his sermon in Genesis 2 could be improved. There are some things that he says that not only create even more questions but also do not satisfy the basic questions being asked.
One of the things he mentions in his sermon is how permanent and binding the Ten Commandments are with the exception of the Fourth.
“There is no question about the other nine commandments being permanent and binding. We are to have no other gods. We are never to make an idol. We are to worship only the true and living God. We are never to take the name of the Lord in vain. We are not to dishonor our father or mother, but rather give them honor. We are not to murder, commit adultery, steal, lie, or covet. Those are all moral mandates, moral commands, with the exception of verses 8 through 11, the fourth command, regarding the Sabbath.”
– John MacArthur [1]
Where the disconnect happens is when he mentions “moral mandates, moral commands.” There is a lot of debate over making such a distinction. Some Christians will say that there should be no distinction between moral law and ceremonial law. Some other Christians are quite comfortable with the distinction being made because it helps us better understand what carries over into the New Covenant and what does not. Because if something God has revealed is morally ethical for all of His creatures to do then we are obligated to obey it because it is godly. Though we certainly can never be justified from keeping the law, we are held accountable to it.
The ceremonial element of the Sabbath for MacArthur is easy to explain away; it ceased after the resurrection, as did all Old Testament ceremonial laws because Christ is the final sacrifice — “It is finished” (John 19:30). But if the Sabbath has a moral aspect to it then it is binding and does transfer. It then becomes a matter of ‘where to’, which I believe is answered in the Lord’s Day.
With such confidence, which we all love, he distinguishes the moral and ceremonial elements of the Sabbath by actually removing the moral element of it. Thomas Aquinas got a lot of things wrong, but one of the things he did get right was that the Sabbath was both moral and ceremonial. As we have already talked about, the Sabbath was established back in the creation account (Genesis 2) and was being practiced by Israel (Exodus 16) before the Ten Commandments were given in Exodus 20. The Fourth Commandment is moral because it has corresponding curses and blessings by how it is disobeyed and obeyed.
We see this in Isaiah 58 as the Lord is speaking to His people that if they will keep His Sabbath day holy and delight in it, they will be blessed and rewarded for it.
“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, 14 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.”
– Isaiah 58:13-14
This is so consistent with Jesus’ teaching about the Sabbath that the scriptures place a big emphasis on ‘delighting in the Lord‘ on the Lord’s sacred Day. By doing this, there is a promised reward from God by remembering it, keeping it, and delighting in it. To suggest that there is no moral aspect to the fourth commandment but only the other nine just seems strange. It seems just as strange to say nine are permanent but one is not. I do not think it is up to us to decide what stands and what falls from the Decalogue (10 Commandments).
MacArthur goes on to explain that Sabbath is merely a sign;
“When God made a covenant with Noah, He promised Noah that He would never destroy the world again, and God identified a sign. What was the sign of the Noahic covenant? Rainbow. When God made a covenant with Abraham, He made that covenant with Abraham and He designated a sign, and the sign of the Abrahamic covenant, participation among the covenant people Israel, was the sign of circumcision. And here you have in the Mosaic covenant another sign, and the sign this time is the Sabbath.”
– John MacArthur [2]
MacArthur suggests that the Sabbath is only a sign to the people of Israel given in the Mosaic covenant. It is certainly true that it is a sign because we see God say this in Exodus 31.
“Therefore you are to observe the sabbath, for it is holy to you. Everyone who profanes it shall surely be put to death; for whoever does any work on it, that person shall be cut off from among his people. 15 For six days work may be done, but on the seventh day there is a sabbath of complete rest, holy to the Lord; whoever does any work on the sabbath day shall surely be put to death. 16 So the sons of Israel shall observe the sabbath, to celebrate the sabbath throughout their generations as a perpetual covenant.’ 17 It is a sign between Me and the sons of Israel forever; for in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, but on the seventh day He ceased from labor, and was refreshed.”
– Exodus 31:14-17
Here, God is telling Moses that the people are given a sign and this sign points to the vertical relationship between them and God. It is a sign that they are His chosen people. It will act as a sign for them to see and the world to see. By them keeping the Sabbath holy it points to God and to something greater that is coming.
MacArthur goes on to explain what he thinks the sign is pointing to;
“The Sabbath was a reminder of creation. The Sabbath was to remind the people of Israel that they had forfeited paradise; that man had forfeited paradise. The law said to them, “Obey this law and you will be blessed.” God said that repeatedly: “Obey this law and you will be blessed,” to show them that righteous behavior would restore a taste of Eden’s paradise. Righteous behavior would also point to a future, a future kingdom when paradise would be regained.
– John MacArthur [3]
So, the Sabbath, every Sabbath that went by, when they rested, they were reminded of a perfect creation, a paradise of God dominated by righteousness, which had been forfeited by sin and could only be regained again by righteousness. God then institutes the seventh-day system – not for everybody in the world; in fact, specifically, it says, for Israel. Verse 17: “A sign between Me and the sons of Israel forever.” Every seventh day was a reminder that they were living in a fallen world. Every seventh day was a reminder that they had lost paradise.”
This sign of the Sabbath is not a sign of reflection on the past, but a sign of the future. A greater rest is coming and it is going to come from God. There could be a “nod” back to Genesis 2 because that is where it comes from, but it still is given to point somewhere forward. What good is a sign that points back? Even the rainbow in the Noahic covenant points to the future, declaring that God will not flood the earth with water ever again. The “ever again” is a nod to the past, but the sign is designed to point to the future. It is also confusing that John MacArthur doesn’t believe that the Sabbath was made for man at creation but then says that it is a sign that points back to creation.
At the beginning of creation, God rested from His work, and the Sabbath was given to God’s people as a sign pointing towards a rest that would come when grace would reign. Christ comes and provides rest for us by His work at Calvary. Then Christ rested from his work at His resurrection. It only makes sense that a sign remains, as seen in the Lord’s Day, pointing to a final eschatological rest. At the end of days, the Godhead will once again make a new heavens and a new earth and then God will rest again after that last work of creation and we will rest with Him forever.
The sign of the Sabbath is not a memorial but a real sign pointing forward. It is a sign that sets apart God’s people from the world. It is certainly a sign built off of precedence and repetition but is always pointing forward to a greater rest. What is strange then is how MacArthur compares the sign of Sabbath to the other signs that are seen in covenants, like Noah and Abraham, because some signs do not require anything of us.
For example, the sign of Noah was not a sign for just Noah and God’s people, it was for the whole world. The sign was that when anyone sees a rainbow it communicates the promise that God would never flood the earth again. There is nothing that we do to participate in that sign because it is not a sign for a chosen people but for the whole world.
The sign of Abraham’s covenant, however, is different. This is a sign that is designed to distinguish the Israelites from the other peoples of the earth. This is a sign that they would have to participate in obedience to be a part of it.
“This is My covenant, which you shall keep, between Me and you and your descendants after you: every male among you shall be circumcised. 11 And you shall be circumcised in the flesh of your foreskin, and it shall be the sign of the covenant between Me and you.”
– Genesis 17:10-11
It is up to Abraham and his descendants to keep the sign of God’s covenant with them. The sign of circumcision is pointing forward also. We read that it was a sign of the need for cleansing, which would come by The Holy Spirit in the New Covenant providing God’s people with circumcised hearts (Deut. 10:16; 30:6; Ezekiel 11:19; 36:25–27; Jeremiah 4:4; 31:31-34).
“But he is a Jew who is one inwardly; and circumcision is that which is of the heart, by the Spirit, not by the letter; and his praise is not from men, but from God.”
– Romans 2:29
This is nothing like the sign of the Noahic covenant. The Abrahamic covenant had a moral component to it. They had to keep it and they had to obey. So to flatten all signs and all covenants in the Old Testament is wrong. Each one is unique and plays a real purpose in God’s redemptive story. If anything, the Abrahamic sign and the Mosaic sign are similar because they are signs that point ahead to something greater. But as we know, circumcision didn’t point all the way to the end. It stopped at the advent of Christ and the coming of the Holy Spirit. That was its telos.
“For in Him all the fullness of Deity dwells in bodily form, 10 and in Him you have been made complete, and He is the head over all rule and authority; 11 and in Him you were also circumcised with a circumcision made without hands, in the removal of the body of the flesh by the circumcision of Christ”
– Colossians 2:9-11
The Sabbath is truly a sign and it is pointing towards a final rest in the future. This sign is grounded in creation and points towards a new creation! And we have the delight of keeping this sign on the Lord’s Day.
Read Next: The Christian Sabbath Part 7: Apostolic Practice
Works Cited
[1-3] John MacArthur, Sermon: Understanding the Sabbath in Genesis 2:1-3. (Sun Valley, CA, Grace to You, September 20th, 2009) Paragraphs 4, 27, 29-30.