If you turn away your foot from the Sabbath, from doing your pleasure on My holy day, and call the Sabbath a delight, the holy day of the LORD honorable, and shall honor Him, not doing your own ways, nor finding your own pleasure, nor speaking your own words, then you shall delight yourself in the LORD; and I will cause you to ride on the high hills of the earth, and feed you with the heritage of Jacob your father (Isaiah 58:13 & 14).

Do these words of the prophet Isaiah describe your attitude and your experience when it comes to the Lord’s Day? If they do not, why is that? Many people who profess to love the Lord Jesus Christ respond to the Bible’s teaching that we ought to observe the first day of the week as a day of holy rest and worship by saying that such an idea is legalism. They think that it is overly restrictive if not downright harsh and oppressive to tell the Christian that he has no business being in the workplace on the Lord’s Day, let alone being on the golf links, at the football stadium, on the beach, or at the mall.

But is such an attitude even close to the spirit of the prophet–indeed of the entire Word of God? The Bible teaches us that the Lord is the Christian’s portion, his chief delight. Moreover, the Scriptures teach that the Lord is present with His people in a special way when they gather together to worship Him on His appointed day. And we are told that He grants them a peculiar blessing when they consciously and deliberately deny themselves other earthly pleasures just so they can be with Him. To say that spending an entire day with God is oppressive is in effect to say, “I don’t want to be cooped up with God all day, and no one can make me!”

Think of it in these terms. Would you tell a young man who is looking forward to spending a week with his new bride in a secluded cabin that he is being hard on himself? Of course not! He wants to be with the one he loves! Whom do you love? When it comes to spending God’s special day in His company, can you say from the heart, “As for me and my house, we will serve the Lord”?

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